This document is a summary of Frequently Asked Questions about the licensing of AOT Technologies formsflow.ai product. It is based upon publicly available information concerning some of the open source licenses attached to third-party components used in the formsflow.ai product.
This document is designed to provide useful information about the licenses associated with components in the formsflow.ai product, but is not a substitute for – and is not – legal advice. Customers are directed to their own legal counsel to answer any questions about licenses that may govern the use of the formsflow.ai product or any software component included in that product.
Yes. All of the components that make up formsflow.ai are licensed under one of the licenses that have been approved by the Open Source Initiative, the entity that reviews and approves licenses so that they may be called “open source.”
The source code for formsflow.ai, including for all of the third-party components that are used in formsflow.ai, can be found on AOT Technologies’GitHub repository for that product.
Formsflow.ai is composed of several software components, under two different open source licenses. Because all of formsflow.ai is licensed under one of two OSI-approved open source licenses, you are granted all the rights inherent in the Open Source Definition. However, each of those license grants impose different obligations, so you need to understand which license governs which component to understand what you can, and can’t, do with any component of formsflow.ai. More detail is discussed below
Formsflow.ai is composed of the following components, which have the following licenses associated with them:
Understanding what a license allows and requires is a legal interpretation question which you should always review with your legal counsel. However, the Apache Foundation has some useful FAQs about its license that do provide guidance on these questions, including:
I’ve made improvements to the Apache Code; may I distribute the modified result?
The Apache License is a highly-permissive license which, as described in the FAQs above, allows you to distribute code subject to that license under different license terms (including terms that don’t require disclosure of source code); however, the license does require that you comply with Section 4 of the license, which requires the following:
a. providing a copy of the Apache 2.0 license;
Understanding what a license allows and requires is a legal interpretation question which you should always review with your legal counsel. However, the author of the Open Software License has some useful FAQs about its license that do provide guidance on these questions, including:
Brief Overview of OSL 3.0 And Its Companion Licenses
The Burdens Of Attribution In The Open Source World
The OSL differs from the Apache License in that it does not allow distribution under different license terms, meaning the OSL license must be retained. This requirement is found in Section 1.c of the OSL. Also, the OSL requires that source code be disclosed with any distribution of binaries. This requirement is found in Section 3 of the OSL. Additionally, it is considered a “distribution” of the code, and therefore source code under the OSL must be provided, if the executables are “distributed or communicated … or made available as an application intended for use over a network.” This requirement is found in Section 5 of the OSL. Thus, if this component is made accessible over a network (including over the internet), the obligation to provide source code for that component to anyone getting access is triggered. Finally, like the Apache License, the OSL requires preservation of “all copyright, patent, or trademark notices from the Source Code …, as well as any notices of licensing and any descriptive text identified therein as an ‘Attribution Notice.’”