These are some of the questions we have received. If you have additional questions, feel free to send a mail to licensing@plone.org with your question.

Is Plone available under a dual-license?

At this time, it is not, nor has it ever been.

The Plone community has transferred IP rights to our new foundation. The foundation has received requests for non-GPL'ed Plone licenses, but we are not selling or giving away such licenses. If this changes, it will be posted here.

What is the GPL?

The GPL is the license that Plone is distributed under, and it governs what you can and can't do with the Plone code. Very shortly summarized, it says that you have to release any changes you make to the code base back to the Plone community if you are redistributing Plone. There are a number of additional questions arising from this however - so we've tried to answer most of them in this document.

Where can I find the GPL?

It's available at the gnu.org web site.

Will Plone cost money in the future for either clients or developers?

No. Should the Foundation offer a non-GPL-licensed version of Plone, then commercially licensed versions of Plone would be able to do this, but they would be products separate from the Plone you are currently using. A company may choose to license the Plone source code and sell it as a separate product, but the Plone you are using now will always be under an Open Source license.

Are there any differences regarding licenses and costs when using Plone commercial and non-commercial settings?

[See note above for current state of dual-licensing.]

No. Plone is issued only under the GPL. We make no distinction between for-profit and non-profit use.

Will it ever cost money to upgrade a current Plone installation?

No.

When developers give source code back to the Plone community, will the Plone Foundation at a later point then include this code in a future commercial release of Plone?

If it's checked into the Plone CVS (not the Collective) as a change to Plone itself, both the Plone Foundation and that developer has full rights to that piece of code. So if Plone Foundation licenses Plone under a commercial license, that code will be part of the package.

We would like to use Plone in a project but we may not be able to use it because of the GPL - we would not like to make our source code public. Can you explain what the rules are?

If you plan on distributing GPL Plone to someone else, then you must distribute source code for Plone and your changes, if any. In addition, your changes must be licensed under a GPL-compatible license.

If you create add-on Products or customize the Plone code, these add-ons/changes are covered by the GPL, and require distribution of the source code along with the product.

Why aren't you using the LGPL?

The GPL is better understood by most companies and meets our community's needs.

Can the Plone Foundation change the license of Plone to (for example) the BSD license?

Yes. The currently released code will always remain GPL, however.

If we should ever decide to change the license, for example the BSD or Apache licenses, we would probably have parallel licenses, so you could choose what fits your needs best. Even if we decided to change to BSD from GPL, the GPL version would still be available and be developed.

I have developed a company intranet, and made some changes to the Plone core that contains business-sensitive details. Do I have to release these publicly?

No. As long as you aren't redistributing the code (e.g.: selling it as your product or distributing it outside your company), you can keep any changes that you do to Plone for yourself. We do appreciate contributions and bug fixes, though. :)

Will I lose the rights to code I contribute to Plone?

Absolutely not. You have full rights to do whatever you want with that piece of code, and the Plone Foundation have full rights to modify that code in the Plone code base.

So why can't I take Plone, change it around a bit, modify the sources and sell it as my own product?

You can. Nothing in the GPL prevents you from re-selling Plone, as long as you meet the terms: you must ship full source code, for Plone, any changes you make, and any add-on products. In addition, you must license your product under a GPL-compatible license, and you cannot use the name "Plone" for any modified product--"Plone" is a registered trademark.

So, you can sell your own version of Plone: you just cannot do so as a non-GPL-compatible product, nor call it "Plone".

You suck! The GPL sucks! The contract is unacceptable! Everything should be license X! Et cetera.

Blind ideological wars are tiresome and will simply damage Plone. We have chosen the GPL as our license, and are sticking with that for now.

What is this bit about responsibility for code checked into Plone in the contract?

You are responsible for not checking in copyrighted code - this is a precaution we have to do, as we don't have the resources to check code contributions from everyone. It does not mean we will sue you because your code has bugs. ;)

I suspect that company X is

• marketing and selling Plone as their own system and/or
• using Plone code in their product

without contributing the changes back to the community. What should I do?

Send a mail to licensing@plone.org with details of where you found the product, and why you think they are using Plone code. We will then contact the company, and see if they are infringing on the GPL, and let our lawyers have a look at it.

I have additional questions that are not answered by this FAQ.

Feedback and additions to this document should be sent to: licensing@plone.org - this document will be updated accordingly.