Licensing

MERMIG is distributed as Open Source Software licensed under the MPL license. The formal terms of the MPL license can be found in the MPL section of the MERMIG Reference Manual.

MERMIG is also available under commercial non-MPL license. For pricing and ordering information, see our special section on MERMIG Commercial Terms.

Free use for those who are 100% MPL

If your application is licensed under MPL or compatible OSI license approved by MERMIG, you are free and welcome to ship any MPL software of MERMIG with your application. By "application" we mean any type of software application, system, tool or utility. For doing this, you need a separate signed agreement with EUROPEAN DYNAMICS. In any event we do recommend you to be in touch with us as there are usually good opportunities for partnership and co-marketing.

Free use for those who never copy, modify or distribute

As long as you never distribute (internally or externally) the MERMIG Software in any way, you are free to use it for powering your application, irrespective of whether your application is under MPL or other OSI approved license or not.

More specifically:

  • Modifying - You are allowed to modify the MERMIG Software source code any way you like. If you distribute the modified version, all changes, all interface code and all code that connects directly or indirectly to the interface code fall under MPL.
  • Copying - You are allowed to copy MERMIG binaries and source code, but when you do so, the copies will fall under the MPL license.

In both cases you need to inform the Initial Developer (i.e. EUROPEAN DYNAMICS) on this.

Commercial use for everyone else

If your application is not licensed under MPL or compatible OSI license approved by MERMIG and you intend to distribute the MERMIG software (be that internally or externally), you must first obtain a commercial license to the MERMIG software in question.

More specifically:

  • If you include MERMIG in your non Open Source application, you need a commercial licence.
  • If you include any part(s) of MERMIG in your non Open Source application (so that your application can run with MERMIG), you need a commercial licence for the part(s) in question.
  • If you use MERMIG Software within your organisation and you don't want to risk it falling under the MPL license, you are welcome to purchase a commercial license.
  • Many users opt for the commercial licence simply because under it EUROPEAN DYNAMICS takes responsibility for its products. Under the MPL licence, there are no warranties or representations from the developer (i.e. from EUROPEAN DYNAMICS).

Exceptions and free commercial licences

If you represent a non-profit organisation or an academic institution, we recommend you to put your own application under MPL. Thereby you are free to use MERMIG software free of charge under the MPL licence. We also believe that if you have strong reasons not to go MPL, you also have the monetary means to purchase commercial licences.

If you are a private individual you are free to use the MERMIG software for your personal applications, as long as you do not distribute them.

Please note that even if you ship a free demo version of your own application, the above rules apply.

Finally, what is the recommendation?
To all commercial organisations we do recommend the commercial licence. Not only does this free you from the far-reaching requirements of the MPL licence, it also gives you a licence letter from MERMIG where we assume responsibility for our product. The MPL licence is an "as is" licence with no warranties whatsoever.

To all MPL/Open Source enthusiasts we do recommend our products under the MPL licence.

To anyone in doubt, we recommend the commercial licence. It is never wrong. Thanks to our cost-effective way of producing software, we are able to sell our commercial licences at prices well under the industry average, and this is without compromising our own profitability.

MERMIG Licenses

For circumstances under which a commercial non-MPL MERMIG license is required, you need a license per application installed. There are no restrictions on the number of connections, number of CPUs, memory or disks to that one database server.

For circumstances under which a commercial non-MPL MERMIG client license is required, you need a license per each installed application.

When in doubt

If you have any questions on MERMIG licensing, feel free to contact us.
OSI = Open Source Initiative, www.opensource.org