mirror of https://github.com/explosion/spaCy.git
* Rename license files
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Matthew Honnibal
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=======
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License
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=======
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I've been writing spaCy for six months now, and I'm very excited to release it.
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I think it's the most valuable thing I could have built. When I was in
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academia, I noticed that small companies couldn't really make use of our work.
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Meanwhile the tech giants have been hiring *everyone*, and putting this stuff
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into production. I think spaCy can change that.
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+------------+-----------+----------+-------------------------------------+
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| License | Price | Term | Suitable for |
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+============+===========+==========+=====================================+
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| Commercial | $5,000 | Life | Production use |
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+------------+-----------+----------+-------------------------------------+
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| Trial | $1 | 90 days | Evaluation, seed startup |
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+------------+-----------+----------+-------------------------------------+
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| AGPLv3 | Free | Life | Research, teaching, hobbyists, FOSS |
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+------------+-----------+----------+-------------------------------------+
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To make spaCy as valuable as possible, licenses to it are for life. You get
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complete transparency, certainty and control. There is much less risk this
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way. And if you're ever in acquisition or IPO talks, the story is simple.
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spaCy can also be used as free open-source software, under the Aferro GPL
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license. If you use it this way, you must comply with the AGPL license terms.
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When you distribute your project, or offer it as a network service, you must
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distribute the source-code, and grant users an AGPL license to it.
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.. I left academia in June 2014, just when I should have been submitting my first
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grant proposal. Grant writing seemed a bad business model. I wasn't sure
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exactly what I would do instead, but I knew that the work I could do was
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valuable, and that it would make sense for people to pay me to do it, and that
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it's often easy to convince smart people of things that are true.
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.. I left because I don't like the grant system. It's not the
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best way to create value, and it's not the best way to get paid.
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Examples
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--------
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In order to clarify how spaCy's license structure might apply to you, I've
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written a few examples, in the form of user-stories.
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Ashley and Casey: Seed stage start-up
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#####################################
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Ashley and Casey have an idea for a start-up. To explore their idea, they want
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to build a minimum viable product they can put in front of potential users and
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investors.
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They have two options.
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1. **Trial commercial license.** With a simple form, they can use spaCy for 90
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days, for a nominal fee of $1. They are free to modify spaCy, and they
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will own the copyright to their modifications for the duration of the license.
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After the trial period elapses, they can either pay the license fee, stop
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using spaCy, release their project under the AGPL.
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2. **AGPL.** Casey and Pat can instead use spaCy under the AGPL license.
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However, they must then release any code that statically or dynamically
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links to spaCy under the AGPL as well (e.g. if they import the module, or
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import a module that imports it, etc). They also cannot use spaCy as
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a network resource, by running it as a service --- this is the
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loophole that the "A" part of the AGPL is designed to close.
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Ashley and Casey find the AGPL license unattractive for commercial use.
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They decide to take up the trial commercial license.
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However, over the next 90 days, Ashley has to move house twice, and Casey gets
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sick. By the time the trial expires, they still don't have a demo they can show
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investors. They send an email explaining the situation, and a 90 day extension
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to their trial license is granted.
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By the time the extension period has elapsed, spaCy has helped them secure
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funding, and they even have a little revenue. They are glad to pay the $5,000
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commercial license fee.
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spaCy is now permanently licensed for the product Ashley and Casey are
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developing. They own the copyright to any modifications they make to spaCy,
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but not to the original spaCy code.
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No additional fees will be due when they hire new developers, run spaCy on
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additional internal servers, etc. If their company is acquired, the license will
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be transferred to the company acquiring them. However, to use spaCy in another
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product, they will have to buy a second license.
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Alex and Sasha: University Academics
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####################################
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Alex and Sasha are post-doctoral researchers working for a university. Part of
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their funding comes from a grant from Google, but Google will not own any part
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of the work that they produce. Their mission is just to write papers.
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Alex and Sasha find spaCy convenient, so they use it in their system under the
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AGPL. This means that their system must also be released under the AGPL, but they're
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cool with that --- they were going to release their code anyway, as it's the only
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way to ensure their experiments are properly repeatable.
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Alex and Sasha find and fix a few bugs in spaCy. They must release these
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modifications, and they ask that they be accepted into the main spaCy repo.
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In order to do this, they must sign a contributor agreement, ceding their
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copyright. When commercial licenses to spaCy are sold, Alex and Sasha will
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not be able to claim any royalties from their contributions.
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Later, Alex and Sasha implement new features into spaCy, for another paper. The
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code was quite rushed, and they don't want to take the time to put together a
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proper pull request. They must release their modifications under the AGPL, but
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they are not obliged to contribute it to the spaCy repository, or concede their
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copyright.
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Phuong and Jessie: Open Source developers
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#########################################
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Phuong and Jessie use the Calibre to manage their e-book libraries. They have an
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idea for a search feature, and they want to use spaCy to implement it. Calibre is
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released under the GPLv3. The AGPL has additional restrictions for projects
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used as a network resource, but they don't apply to this project, so Phuong and
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Jessie can use spaCy to improve Calibre. They'll have to release their code, but
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that was always their intention anyway.
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