Licensing
Legal information/License FAQ¶
What license is OpenCATS distributed under?
This application is available under two licenses.
Code contributed to the "OpenCATS" project is under Mozilla Public License 2.0
Code from the original ‘CATS Project’ circa 2007 is under CATS Public License Version 1.1a (a modified Mozilla Public License)
Can we change this license?
For now, no. The original code will continue to be licensed under the CPL. The OpenCATS team is aggresively working towards moving away from the CPL to a full MPL release.
The OpenCATS code is a combination of MPL and CPL code as of this writing.
The current owners/inheritors of the catsone.com codebase are largely unconcerned with the opencats.org project, but the original license remains in effect.
What CAN we change?
You can change OpenCATS use OpenCATS in whatever way you choose. HOWEVER the items noted in the CPL can not be changed until OpenCATS moves to a full MPL release. See the next question for details.
What are the key features of this license?
There are some ‘unique’ requirements in Exhibit B;
You may not use the Licensed Software to operate in or as a time-sharing, outsourcing, service bureau, application service provider or managed service provider environment.
The following copyright notice must be retained and clearly legible at the bottom of every rendered HTML document: Copyright (C) 2005 - 2006 Cognizo Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
The “Powered by CATS” text or logo must be retained and clearly legible on every rendered HTML document. The logo, or the text “CATS”, must be a hyperlink to the 'CATS Project website', (currently http://www.catsone.com/.
Is this an Open Source license?
Sadly, Exhibit B: I) restricts one of the freedoms required to be defined as Open Source. This means that although OpenCATS is free (as in beer) and the source is ‘Open’, it is not officially Open Source. This project does not have the rights to strip the appendix.
Simplify this for me, what can I do and what can’t I do?
Simply put, you can do anything you want with your own OpenCATS system for you or your business. The main thing you can NOT do is resell the opencats platform as a service (No SaaS). The other things (cosmetic and linking) are specified in Section 2 and 3 above.
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