Read every line
Excalibur View and the Office server are both published, under the Elastic License 2.0. Read them, change them, build them yourself. You may not resell them or work around the licensing, and I don't call it open source, because it isn't.
The source on GitHubWhat you can do
The plain-words version. The licence text itself is what governs, and it's short enough to read in five minutes.
- Read the source. All of it, the app and the server both, not a sample.
- Change it, for any reason, without asking me.
- Build it and run your own copy, on any machine in your company.
- Keep running it after you stop paying for updates, or after I'm gone.
- Hand it to an auditor, an insurer or a customer who wants to look.
What you can't do
Three limits, and that's the whole of it.
- Offer the software to other people as a hosted or managed service.
- Work around, remove or defeat the licensing.
- Strip out the copyright and licence notices.
Buying Office buys a licence to run the server, not access to the code. The code was already there.
It isn't open source
The Elastic License 2.0 isn't approved by the Open Source Initiative, so calling it open source would be wrong. I call it source-available, because that's what it is. Vendors who shipped under this licence and kept saying "open source" got taken apart for it, and they deserved to be.
If the distinction matters to the people who sign off on your software, here's the honest answer to give them: you can read it and build it, and you can't resell it as a service.
If you're only allowed to run what you built
Some shops are. It's usually a good sign.
A defense contractor whose IT policy says it may only run software it compiled itself can compile this. So can an owner who wants a second set of eyes on what touches the drawings. Neither needs my permission, an account, or a conversation with a salesperson.
Compare that with what's on offer now: the program most estimating offices use, nobody outside it has read a line of. Your compliance officer can read every line of this one.
What isn't published
Two things, said up front so there's nothing to discover later.
- The trade tool chests I sell and the tables behind them: the shapes, the columns, the unit weights. That's sourced research, and it's the part that took the longest. The chest format is open and the program reads and writes chests, so anyone can build their own or keep using the ones they already have. What's sold is the research, not the file format.
- The signing keys. Releases are signed with a key that stays offline. The public half is in the source, which is how your copy checks an update before it installs it. That's the point of it: you can verify what I send you without trusting me.
The licence itself
Same licence for every Excalibur app. Excalibur View now, Excalibur Citadel when it ships, so there's one document to read and one answer to give.
The Elastic License 2.0, in full
Signed release binaries live separately, in cngmoney88/hyperview-releases, which is what the download page reads.
Questions about the licence
If your contract or your insurer needs something answered in writing, ask and I'll answer in writing.