Selecting licenses for PrivMX software was a real pain for our team. On the one hand, we always wanted to make PrivMX totally open, and on the other hand, we were always thinking about PrivMX being a self-sufficient project which can reward the team financially. Programmers earn their salary by doing programming job, don't they?  

Why did we want to make PrivMX open? For us it's simple - this is the only way to earn your **trust** and a way to attract talented people who can help develop the project further.

Ultimately, we started a dedicated company (PrivMX BV), wrote our own original free and open software licenses, and started to provide Team Server hosting services as well as some additional software. This is our current business model, in short. And yes - we've been trying to earn our salaries by doing this business.

So, the situation with PrivMX software licensing is as follows:

* The source code is open and freely available for inspection, use and modification. You can, for example, build your own versions of the PrivMX software. This is formalized by the [PrivMX Source Code License](https://dev.privmx.com/main/legal/-/blob/master/PrivMX%20Source%20Code%20License/LICENSE.md) which applies to all PrivMX source code.

* However, you can't redistribute the source code or the software and you can't provide hosting services for third parties. These activities require **additional arrangements** with us. These rules are formalized by the [PrivMX Freeware Software License](https://dev.privmx.com/main/legal/-/blob/master/PrivMX%20Freeware%20License/LICENSE.md) which applies to all software built from our source code (including prebuilt instalators and packages we publish on our website).

As you see, it's something similar to an OSS licensing, but "minus redistribution". 

Please [contact us](https://privmx.com/contact) if you have any questions regarding licensing of PrivMX software.