BridgeJavaSDK is licensed to you under the BSD 3-clause license, with the additional conditions specified in the Commons Clause. It is important to understand how the two work together, and this FAQ provides some, in the hope that it is helpful to you.
The Software is provided to you by the Licensor under the License, each as defined below, subject to the following condition.
Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of rights under the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software.
For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means practicing any or all of the rights granted to you under the License to provide to third parties, for a fee or other consideration (including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/support services related to the Software), a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software. Any license notice or attribution required by the License must also include this Commons Clause License Condition notice.
Software: BridgeJavaSDK
License: BSD 3-clause (see below)
Licensor: Sage Bionetworks
Copyright 2023 Sage Bionetworks
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
- Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
- Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
- Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
I’d like to run my own instance of all or part of the Software at my institution / company rather than use Sage’s hosted service. Is this permitted?
Yes, this is permitted if you are providing the Software or derivative work of the Software to your own institution / company. This is true regardless of whether you are part of a for-profit or not-for-profit organization. You may not, however, charge 3rd parties fees or other forms of consideration for use of a hosted service you provide that is based on the Software without a separate commercial license from us. This includes accepting payment from one party to provide a service to a different party (e.g. accepting a NIH grant to provide a service to other institutions).
I’d like to use the Software to support a research project at my university / company, and I’d like to modify Software source code to make custom changes for my project. Is this use permitted?
Yes, absolutely. The License makes source code available and authorizes modifications, and the Commons Clause does not change that fact. Sage encourages experimentation with software changes when needed to advance research interests. Furthermore, those modifications belong to you, not Sage.
If you do make improvements to the code base, we would appreciate contribution back to Sage’s main line of development under the BSD 3-clause license, which benefits the broader community (in the same way that the contributions from others before you benefit you) and may also help make them more maintainable by Sage in the future. But, this is not required by the License.
What if I need to contract with a developer or development team to make these changes to the Software on my behalf, or to operate a hosted service for my organization - is this use still permitted?
Yes. As long as the developer was modifying the source code to the Software or building a hosted service using the Software on behalf and under the License of a research program at a single institution, we’d consider that use of the Software source code by that institution. It doesn’t matter if the people working with the code are employed by the institution / company or hired to perform this work on a contract basis by the institution /company, as long as the developments are used only by the institution.
I’d like to offer multiple universities, institutions, or other entities a product or service that would incorporate all or part of the Software. How is that possible?
Sage is interested in partnering with other organizations to increase the impact and use of Sage’s tools. We have applied the Commons Clause to the License to ensure that Sage is part of the discussion, protecting our continued investment in the Software, and advancing Sage’s mission to serve all researchers regardless of the financial strength of their organization.
No. Measures have been developed for use on the platform by various parties, and are subject to the licensing and terms of use chosen by their developers.