View source for BCI2000 Licensing

==GNU General Public License (GPL)==
BCI2000 is available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Simply speaking, this license allows any use of BCI2000, and to develop and distribute derived software products under any terms, provided that the full source code of the derived product is made publicly available for download under the terms of the GPL.

In order to use BCI2000 under the terms of the GPL, you may agree to the GPL, and sign up as a BCI2000 user, on [http://{{SERVERNAME}}/GPL this page]. Then, you may use the newly created BCI2000 account to get access to the compiled version of BCI2000, and to its source code.

==Commercial Use==
Contrary to widespread belief, the GPL does not prohibit commercial use of GPLed software, nor does it prohibit commercial development of software based on GPLed software. BCI2000 may be used for any commercial purpose one likes, commercial products may be based on BCI2000, and may be commercially distributed. The only restriction is that any derived product must provide unhindered access to its full source code, under the terms of the GPL.

That source code access condition is not even incompatible with selling licenses of the BCI2000-derived product to customers -- these may be willing to pay the price for a license if it entails a fair amount of support. Also, in case of a product derived from BCI2000, it will be practically worthless without signal acquisition hardware (e.g., an EEG amplifier). Thus, distributing a BCI2000-derived software along with signal acquisition hardware can justify a higher price for the hardware -- because it offers more value in conjunction with the BCI2000-derived software -- even if that software itself is distributed under the GPL.

==Commercial Licensing==
Finally, BCI2000 itself is not restricted to the GPL, but may be licensed under different terms for commercial purposes. If a company wishes to distribute a derived product without providing access to the source code, it may obtain such a BCI2000 license. In that case, it will also be necessary to purchase a certain amount of commercial developer licenses for the [http://www.digia.com/en/Qt Qt application framework] which BCI2000's user interface is based upon.

For more information about individual BCI2000 licensing, please contact Peter Brunner.