General License Questions
NOTE: the ZpqrtBnk General License experiment has been terminated on Oct. 29, 2019. This page is obsolete and only maintained for reference.
This page tries to answer some of the common questions that have been raised since the introduction of the ZpqrtBnk General License. If you cannot find the answer you are looking for... ask on Twitter!
Getting monthly recurring income: does that mean the invoice is for a monthly, or annual, or one-off amount?
A license is signed for 1 year, at the price you decide. Invoicing can then be a one-off, or monthly or quarterly or whatever. Depending on the amount, you may want to commit on a monthly invoice. But there is still one license, one year, one global amount.
Does that include the Umbraco bundled ModelsBuilder?
There are several editions of ModelsBuilder:
- Zbu.ModelsBuilder is the original Models Builder product. It is obsolete and does not support recent 7 and 8 versions of Umbraco. Ignore it.
- When Models Builder got bundled with Umbrao Core, it was renamed Umbraco.ModelsBuilder. Latest versions are 3.1.1 (for Umbraco 7) and 8.1.5 (for Umbraco 8). These are the last versions, there will be no further versions. They remain covered by the original MIT (pure) license.
- Umbraco HQ plans to ship future versions of Core with a built-in (not bundled) Umbraco.ModelsBuilder. It will have limited features: PureLive only, no customization of models, no API, no partials... It will be maintained by HQ. That version is covered by HQ's MIT (pure) license.
- ZpqrtBnk.ModelsBuilder is the new thing. It is covered by the MIT + General License.
Note: the "HQ plan" above was mentioned when we discussed me leaving and the future of Models Builder. HQ still needs to confirm what they actually intend to do with MB. Yes, it's confusing.
What-if I use your code without a license?
Well, that is it, really. You are "morally wrong" by my terms, but nothing much will happen. You may have your reasons. We can be friends. Of course the risk is that I cannot secure enough funding and have to stop all activities.
Is the project (Models Builder) staying open sources? What about contributors?
The project does remain open source, and happily welcomes contributors. Source will be public on GitHub under the MIT + General License. To keep things simple, everyone needs a license to use the code, even contributors. But remember you set the price of the license to whatever you think is fair. If you are significantly contributing to the code base, then maybe a very low license price is fair.
Have you thought about GitHub Sponsors, Patreon, [other funding organization]?
Yes. Let us say I want to keep things simple. There is only one way, which is through invoices.