API vs Repository licensing question

Questions about licensing of ScientiaMobile products
patrick.m
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2011 3:11 pm

API vs Repository licensing question

Postby patrick.m » Tue Dec 20, 2011 3:56 pm

The information on licensing requirements is somewhat confusing to me. I read the Licensing FAQ and the licensing for the API is very straightforward, mostly thanks to the very helpful product matrix.

My confusion stems from the Q:What's the license for the WURFL Repository?, which links to the ScientiaMobile main site twice and the rest of the response seems to imply that commercial use of the repository is not free. There is no information that I can find on the ScientiaMobile site regarding commercial (i.e. paid) licensing for the repository itself. The download page sheds some light on this, in part saying:
You are authorized to use the WURFL file AS IS, without modification and solely innconnection with one of the standard WURFL APIs, starting from version 1.3, nreleased and supported by ScientiaMobile and available at the official WURFL website at http://wurfl.sourceforge.net.

You are not authorized to create a derivative work of or otherwise modify this WURFL file, and you are further not authorized to use, copy, display, nor distribute, in each case, any derivative work of this WURFL file, whether created by you or someone else.
This seems to be saying that there is no licensing fee for commercial use of the repository xml file in conjunction with a paid, commercially licensed PHP and database API. Is this correct? The product matrix for the API states "License is perpetual for licensed version of the software. Free upgrades within one year."; does this have any interaction with the repository? In other words, if you release a new xml file, am I free to update my servers with the new version even if I am outside the 1 year period of free updates?

I do see the product matrix mentions a 'personal customer vault' with weekly updates to the repository; I would very much like to hear more about what this is an how it works.

I think I am also confused on the overlap of the PHP API and the database API, but I'll save that for another thread after I've read more about each of them.

Many thanks.

kamermans
Posts: 393
Joined: Mon Jun 06, 2011 9:50 am

Re: API vs Repository licensing question

Postby kamermans » Tue Dec 20, 2011 7:16 pm

Hi Patrick,

Our APIs and Data are very tightly coupled by nature, and we only license them together. When you purchase an API, you get a perpetual license for that API, including access to all updates to that API for one year. You also get access to a weekly snapshot of the WURFL data with a license for one year that grants you more flexibility (for example, you can use the commercial data with non-official APIs if you choose). From your customer vault, you can easily create a direct-download URL that you can copy and paste into your Database API configuration file (TeraWurflConfig.php - WURFL_DL_URL) which allows you to update the WURFL data directly from your ScientiaMobile account using the built-in web administration interface. This download URL supports If-Modified-Since, Etag and HTTP HEAD requests, so you can setup a scheduled task to check for an updated copy of the WURFL data (occasionally we release Out-Of-Band updates between the weekly snapshots that you also have access to).

The issue of our two PHP APIs (Database API + PHP API) stems from the creation of ScientiaMobile, at which point Tera-WURFL was brought into the group of "Standard APIs". We are planning a new major release of our APIs in 2012, at which point we expect these two APIs to converge into one, but in the meantime, both APIs are maintained by the same team. After the APIs are combined, licenses from the current APIs will be converted to a license for the new API, but updates and bugfixes will still be applied for some time to support our existing users.

Edit: As of 7/25/16 ScientiaMobile no longer uses AGPL or any other Open Source licensing. Please refer to http://www.scientiamobile.com/page/get- ... elease-1-8 for more information or contact sales.
Thanks,

Steve Kamerman
ScientiaMobile

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