ActiveBPEL Licensing Policies


ActiveBPEL, LLC and its parent organization, Active Endpoints, Inc.,
distribute the ActiveBPEL engine technology under two licensing options. You
can use the ActiveBPEL engine under an Open Source License by downloading it
from www.activebpel.org. Alternatively, you can acquire a Commercial License
to Active Endpoints' ActiveWebflow products, which include the ActiveBPEL
engine technology, by contacting Active Endpoints, Inc. at
www.active-endpoints.com. The sections below are intended to provide you with
information about our licensing policies so that you can determine which
license is the best fit for your needs, and so that you can understand other
important aspects of your ActiveBPEL engine license.


1 - Licensing Introduction and Guidelines 

ActiveBPEL, LLC and its parent organization, Active Endpoints, Inc., are
committed to providing the open source community with world-class BPEL
technologies. The ActiveBPEL engine represents commercial quality software
that has been created by Web services pioneers with a deep understanding of
BPEL and its predecessor specifications. We believe that the open source
licensing option is an effective means through which to cultivate community
interest, education and development around BPEL technologies.

Our flexible licensing alternatives are intended to balance the following
fundamental objectives:

* Provide the open source community with premium quality BPEL technology 

* Foster the ongoing evolution of the ActiveBPEL engine through community
  contributions and through our own continued investments

* Provide a means through which ActiveBPEL community members can quickly learn
  about BPEL and evaluate its use for various purposes

* Permit organizations to examine and test the quality of our technologies
  prior to engaging in commercial relationships with us, when appropriate

Below are some guidelines to help you determine which of our licensing
alternatives might be the best fit for you. If you have questions about which
license to use, you can contact us at license@activebpel.org.

* If you license your software to others under the GNU General Public License
  (GPL) as defined by the Free Software Foundation, then use ActiveBPEL, LLC’s
  Open Source License.

* If you wish to redistribute any of the ActiveBPEL engine technology with
  your closed source "proprietary" software, and/or you require product-level
  technical support, then you can purchase a commercial license for Active
  Endpoints’ ActiveWebflow product.

* If you wish to use high-productivity diagramming tools to create your BPEL
  processes and deploy them to the ActiveBPEL engine, you can purchase a
  commercial license for Active Endpoints’ ActiveWebflow product.

In addition to the guidelines provided above, the sections that follow give
more specific information about licensing, code contributions, and our
policies on patents and trademarks. Please read these sections carefully, as
they are intended to help you understand your responsibilities when you use
the ActiveBPEL engine technology.


2 - Open Source and Commercial Licenses 

ActiveBPEL, LLC is an open source software organization that licenses and
distributes the ActiveBPEL engine technology. The ActiveBPEL code base
includes some of the software that is also available in Active Endpoints
Inc.’s commercial software products. Active Endpoints, Inc. and ActiveBPEL,
LLC together offer you two licensing options:

* Open Source License. If you are developing open source applications,
  ActiveBPEL, LLC distributes its ActiveBPEL engine technology primarily under
  the GNU General Public License. However, because the ActiveBPEL engine
  technology includes some software written and licensed by others, certain
  parts of the ActiveBPEL technology are covered by other open source license
  agreements, such as the Lesser GNU General Public License (LGPL). In this
  Licensing Policies statement, the open source licenses that collectively
  cover the ActiveBPEL engine’s technologies are referred to as the "Open
  Source Licenses." To review the licenses that cover the various modules of
  ActiveBPEL, see our Licensing Details. Making our product available under
  Open Source Licenses allows you to freely modify our software and
  redistribute it, as long as you do so under the terms of the Open Source
  Licenses. The ActiveBPEL engine technology is licensed free of charge and is
  provided "AS IS." Because the ActiveBPEL engine technology is offered free
  of charge, ActiveBPEL, LLC does not take on any liability for performance or
  intellectual property matters for this software.

* Commercial Licenses. If you are developing commercial applications and/or
  you require product technical support, Active Endpoints, Inc. licenses its
  ActiveWebflow software suite (which includes the ActiveBPEL engine
  technology as well as other proprietary technologies) under the terms of a
  commercial, closed-source license agreement. ActiveWebflow is licensed for a
  fee and includes customary commercial terms for support and intellectual
  property liabilities. OEMs, resellers, systems integrators and government
  users typically prefer a commercial license.

If you are not sure which license to use, you can always test the ActiveBPEL
engine under the GPL license and inspect the source code before you purchase a
commercial license to ActiveWebflow.


3 - Changes to Our Licensing Policies 

We believe that our commercial and open source software communities can work
together. We will be striving over time to streamline our licensing policies
to provide the optimal balance of access to our open source products and
commercial viability for our commercial products. We hope to achieve the
maximum synergy between these two models: contributions from the open source
community will help make our products robust and adaptable, and development
resources from our privately-funded commercial operations will help fuel the
development of our open source products.

Because we want to accomplish this balance, the dual licensing policy of
ActiveBPEL, LLC and Active Endpoints, Inc. is a work in progress. So, from
time to time, we may change this policy. For instance, we may modify the Open
Source License terms we offer. But, of course, if you receive a license to our
code under an Open Source License, and we subsequently change our licensing
policy, this will not terminate the rights you have already been granted. Any
changes will be changes going forward.


4 - Contributions and Code Base Sharing 

We encourage contributions to our code base from the open source community.
Like most open source projects, we will maintain the code base for our
official releases; contributions you offer may or may not be included. Any
code included in our open source code base will be made available under our
Open Source License terms.

However, because we also offer a commercial licensing model, we may use
contributions to our open source code base in our commercially licensed
products as well. We believe this is consistent with the spirit of free
software, because nothing will prevent you from making your contributions
available under open source licensing terms. We simply ask that you allow us
to include your contributions in our commercial products as well.

If you wish to contribute to the ActiveBPEL code base, you must agree to the
terms of our Code Contribution Agreement. We cannot accept contributions
unless you agree to these terms. This helps protect us, and the open source
community, from liability for intellectual property infringement. It also
ensures that we will not have to commit resources to legal disputes about code
you contribute. We would rather use those resources to improve our software.


5 - Patents 


From time to time, Active Endpoints, Inc. and ActiveBPEL, LLC may file for and
obtain patents in the United States or any other country. An important reason
to pursue patents is to prevent others from bringing patent infringement
lawsuits that would make our products unavailable under our Open Source
Licenses. We will not exercise our patents to take a "second bite at the
apple." In other words, if any code you received from us under an Open Source
License falls within the scope of any claim of any of our patents, we will not
use that patent to prevent you from exercising your license to that code. The
following is a more formal declaration of our patent policy:

To the extent you make, use, offer to sell, or sell products including or
embodying software licensed to you by ActiveBPEL, LLC under an Open Source
License and such software infringes any claim of any patent owned by Active
Endpoints, Inc. or ActiveBPEL, LLC ("Active"), Active shall not enforce such
patent against you in connection with such making, use, offer to sell or sale
of such product. The foregoing does not apply if the infringement arises from
modifications to the licensed software made by any party other than Active.
The foregoing will be void with respect to you if you bring a patent
infringement claim against Active or any of its affiliates (including without
limitation cross-claims or counterclaims). The foregoing will not be construed
as an assurance that such patents are enforceable or that the exercise of
rights under such patents does not infringe the patent or other intellectual
property rights of any other entity.

The ActiveBPEL engine technology implements a standard called the Business
Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS, or BPEL, for short),
which is a standard published by the Organization for the Advancement of
Structured Information Standards (OASIS). Information about this standard is
available at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=wsbpel
. Some of the companies that participated in the development of that standard
have made statements about the patent rights they own that cover this
standard. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsbpel/ipr.php. ActiveBPEL, LLC
cannot control these policies, of course. Currently, no company has posted a
patent policy demanding license fees to practice the standard. Some of the
companies, however, have posted terms and conditions for a royalty-free patent
license. We cannot control these terms and conditions. If you license the
ActiveBPEL engine technology, you are responsible for complying with those
terms if you wish to benefit from those patent licenses. Our Open Source
Licenses do not grant any rights to these patents.


6 - Trademarks 

We offer our software under Open Source Licenses, so you will have the freedom
to change it. But there is a difference between copyright in software and
trademark rights. We strictly enforce our trademark rights - we must, in order
to keep them valid. There are significant restrictions on your ability to use
the ActiveBPEL, LLC name and logos, even when built into binaries that we
provide.

7 - Trademark Notices 

You must not remove our trademarks from our binaries. You may truthfully state
that an unmodified version of our software is ActiveBPEL software, as long as
you include the appropriate notice language described below. However, if you
are distributing copies over a Web site, we ask that you do this by providing
a link directly to our site, rather than offering it on your own server. We
require this because the speed and reliability of the server will bear upon
our reputation and affect our rights in our trademark.

In addition, you must insure that you are properly identifying ActiveBPEL, LLC
as the source of the ActiveBPEL engine technology. Otherwise, you will be
incorrectly implying that you are the source of our software. You must do this
even if you have modified the ActiveBPEL software as allowed under the Open
Source Licenses. Therefore, to avoid violating our trademark rights, you
should use trademarks and notices as follows:

* If you are redistributing unmodified versions of our software as made
  available on our Web site, you must not remove our trademarks from
  unmodified binaries. Thus, any of our notices or logos that are embedded in
  the ActiveBPEL engine software must remain visible to the user.

* If you are redistributing modified versions of our software, you must
  include a notice stating: "This product includes software used under license
  from ActiveBPEL, LLC, but it is not an ActiveBPEL product and has not been
  tested, endorsed, or approved by ActiveBPEL, LLC."

* If you are redistributing either unmodified or modified versions of the
  ActiveBPEL technology, you must prominently place a notice saying "Powered
  by ActiveBPEL" on the packaging, promotional content (e.g. brochures, press
  releases, website copy), and about screens for your software. You must also
  follow the Trademark Guidelines on the proper use of our trademarks.

Our trademarks symbolize our reputation and identity, so their proper use is
important. You would need a formal license from us in order to use our
trademarks in a way that states or suggests that we sponsor, endorse, or are
otherwise affiliated with your project or use. You do not need a formal
license agreement in order to make purely informational references to our
trademarks (such as in a product review or article), but even informational
references should follow our Trademark Guidelines. Provided that you follow
these guidelines, you may link to www.activebpel.org. However, the context and
implementation of those links must make it clear that you are not endorsed by
or affiliated with us, but are simply linking to our site or our software.
Please e-mail us at trademarks@activebpel.org if you have any questions about
the use of our trademarks.



8 - Trademark Guidelines 

The first or most prominent mention of our trademark, ActiveBPEL, as well as
any of our other trademarks identified below, should be accompanied by the
letters TM in superscript and an asterisk immediately to the right, e.g.:
ACTIVEBPEL TM*. Somewhere nearby in legible typeface should be an asterisk
with a notation reading: ACTIVEBPEL is a trademark of ActiveBPEL, LLC, and is
used under license.

We may register this (and other) trademarks in the future, at which time it
would be appropriate to replace the TM symbol with the registered trademark
symbol (®). We will post a notice here if this happens.

It is not necessary to use trademark symbols at every mention of a mark in
running text. Instead, the first and most prominent references to a particular
mark such as in headers on a web page, the beginning and ending of
presentations, login or welcome screens, product media, and advertising or
promotional materials in all media.

Trademarks Should Be Used as Adjectives and in Their Proper Form. Trademarks
should be used as adjectives followed by a generic term for instance,
ACTIVEBPEL engine technology. The spelling and syntax of marks should never be
varied - no words should be omitted or abbreviated, nor should acronyms be
used in place of specific marks.

A current list of our trademarks appears below. Any questions about proper use
for a specific display should be directed to trademarks@activebpel.org.

List of Trademarks Currently Owned by ActiveBPEL, LLC:

ActiveBPEL TM
