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Open Source Versus Commercial Licenses for the gSOAP Software

The gSOAP 2.8.0 releases and higher are distributed under:
  1. The gSOAP Public License 1.3 (which is based on the Mozilla public license 1.1). Components NOT covered by the gSOAP Public License are:
    • wsdl2h tool and its source code output,
    • soapcpp2 tool and its source code output,
    • UDDI code,
    • the webserver example code in gsoap/samples/webserver,
    • and several example applications in the gsoap/samples directory.

    For details, see the note down below. The gSOAP public license is included in the package: gsoap/license.pdf

  2. GPL v2 (GNU Public License, a common open-source software license) covers all of the gSOAP software.

    If you use gSOAP under the GPL v2 to integrate parts of it or code generated by it with your own code, then you are allowed to sell copies of the modified program commercially, but only under the terms of the GNU GPL v2. Thus, you must make the source code of your programs available to the users of your program as described in the GPL, and they must be allowed to redistribute and modify it as described in the GPL. These requirements are the condition for including the GPL-covered code you received in a program of your own.

    If you do not wish for your program to be released under a GPL-compatible open source license, then an alternate proprietary software license for gSOAP which will remove the aforementioned requirement is available from Genivia Inc, see 3) below.

    For more information on the GNU Public License 2.0, please visit: GPL v2 FAQ

    We do not accept third-party GPL contributions to avoid having to fork the code base in GPL and non-GPL.

  3. Proprietary commercial software development licenses for the standard edition. The standard edition is exactly identical to the open source version of gSOAP, but without the GPL licensing limitations. There is also an enterprise edition that offers the gold standard toolset.
IMPORTANT NOTE Please check the suitability of GPL v2 for your project. Requirements imposed by the GPL v2 may affect the release of your software, as explained below.

gSOAP and GPL

If you use gSOAP under the GPL v2 to integrate parts of it or code generated by it with your own code, then you are allowed to sell copies of the modified program commercially, but only under the terms of the GNU GPL v2. Thus, for instance, you must make the source code available to the users of the program as described in the GPL, and they must be allowed to redistribute and modify it as described in the GPL. These requirements are the condition for including the GPL-covered code you received in a program of your own. These restrictions may hamper certain proprietary software development scenarios. If you do not wish for your program to be released under a GPL-compatible open source license, then an alternate proprietary software license for gSOAP which will remove the aforementioned requirement is available from Genivia Inc. The gSOAP software does not include any third-party GPL code. All software was build from the ground up. Note that the GNU Bison and Flex tools are used to generate source code for the gSOAP soapcpp2 compiler. However, the Bison/Flex-generated source code is not restricted by the GPL or LGPL terms. Non-GPL third-party contributions are included in the 'extras' directory in the package and you are free to use these contributions. Suggested changes and improvements by vendors were accepted under the public gSOAP license (not GPL), which includes support for VxWorks and Apache and IIS modules for gSOAP.

The gSOAP Public License

The gSOAP Public License 1.3 is based on MPL1.1 (Mozilla Public License 1.1) and covers the gSOAP engine stdsoap2 and plugins.

The license allows for commercial and non-commercial use of limited parts of gSOAP without fees or royalties. It also allows products to be built on top and distributed under any license (including commercial). Products developed with gSOAP must include a notice of copyright and a disclaimer of warranty in the product's documentation (gSOAP public License Exhibit B).

The gSOAP public license requires modifications that are distributed as part of an open source product based on gSOAP to be submitted back to us.

IMPORTANT: the soapcpp2 and wsdl2h tools, UDDI code, Web server, and sample applications are NOT covered by the gSOAP public license. These are offered under a choice of GPL or commercial licensing.

Questions? Please contact me by email at: engelen AT acm DOT org.