Open Source Licenses for the gSOAP Software

gSOAP is distributed under a choice of:

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 and its source code output, UDDI, and several sample applications, see note below.
Or GPL (GNU Public License, a common open-source software license).
Or a proprietary software development site license.

Pick the license that applies best for your intended use. The software is offered under GPL conditions to enable the software to be used with open source GPL projects, educational use, and so on. We do not accept third-party GPL contributions to avoid having to fork the code base in GPL and non-GPL.

Important note: the wsdl2h WSDL parser, UDDI code, and sample applications such as the stand-alone web server are distributed ONLY under the GPL or the proprietary license. This means that commercial use of wsdl2h to generate code for product development, or the use of the UDDI source code, or the use of code from the sample Web service applications requires the proprietary software development license. The reason for this is that the wsdl2h tool, UDDI and some of the sample applications are not developed at Florida State University. Please contact me by email if you have any questions on licensing and software support: engelen AT acm DOT org.

gSOAP and GPL

The GPL license is a common open-source license. The GPL requires all software development to be open-sourced under GPL, or GPL-compatible licenses, which excludes proprietary licenses. 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).

The license allows for commercial and non-commercial use 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 should include a notice of copyright and a disclaimer of warranty in the product's documentation (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.

Note that the wsdl2h tool, 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.