Licensing FAQ
From Linux-iSCSI
This page answers Frequently Asked Questions you may have with regard to licensing RisingTide Systems (RTS) software, such as LIO Target, targetcli, or Core-iSCSI.
What license is RTS software released under?
The LIO Target Community Edition (LIO-CE) is released under the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPL). The targetcli Community Edition is released under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 (AGPLv3). The RTS Storage Enterprise Edition is released under a proprietary RTS license where applicable.
Essentially, this means that you get the full source code of the Community Editions, and you can distribute and modify it, provided that you ship all modifications under the respective GPL as well.
If you want the extra features that are missing from the Community Editions, you can alternatively license the full Storage Enterprise Edition from RTS.
Can I buy a commercial license?
You can purchase commercial licenses from RTS and receive benefits such as access to enterprise features, support for mission-critical use, and a subscitption to updates. We also encourage ISVs and IHVs to incorporate our software stack into their offerings, preferably through a custom license deal with RTS. Please contact RTS for additional information.
How can RTS software be licensed both open source and commercially?
This is called "dual licensing." Since RTS holds all the copyrights to its software code, or is at least permitted to relicense code that is owned by external contributors or other parties, we are free to choose the terms under which we license the code to our customers, and/or the open-source community.
Why dual licensing?
We - like other companies - believe that dual licensing gives both developers and users the best of two worlds. While anyone is free to look at the code and even improve it, commercial licenses support the company and allow for professional maintenance and support. The open-source community gets more high-quality free software at no cost, while businesses can rely on quality support from our first-hand developers. Both worlds profit from each other: The commercial licenses support both our business, and the open-source community, and vice versa.
Will our licensing terms be changed in the future?
We are not currently planning to do so, but it doesn't really matter. Any code that was once released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) cannot be "closed" again. The license that RTS has granted you with the GPL is perpetual and cannot be taken back. Even if RTS were to change the license again, this could only affect future versions, and anybody would still be permitted to redistribute our existing code under the terms of the GPL.
Which guidelines apply to the use of the name RisingTide Systems?
The term RisingTide Systems has been registered by RTS as a trademark in a number of countries. It may be freely used together with the products available from this web site. However, if you choose to ship custom binaries and/or source code revisions of the product, RTS reserves the right to deny use of the trademark RisingTide Systems. This might seem rather strict but we believe that it is important to avoid any kind of confusion arising from multiple versions of the same product coming from different sources.
See also
- Contributing
- Target, targetcli
- Wikipedia entries: GPL, AGPL, MIT License
