Open Source and Commercial: Dual Licensing
TRIBiQ CMS is offered under two different licensing schemes.
Open Source GPL
It is available under the GNU GPL (General Public License), probably the world's most popular Open Source License, and under our own Commercial License.
Under the GPL, anyne is at liberty to freely use and distribute TRIBiQ CMS, provided they abide by the terms of the GPL.
As of version 5.0.4 of TRIBiQ CMS, version 3 of the GPL applies. It is a requirement that the authors of TRIBiQ CMS are given credit for producing the software. This requires that any site owner who is installing or running TRIBiQ CMS should place a hyperlink to http://tribiq.com in the footer of each template of each site they produce or operate. This link should be entitled "Powered by TRIBiQ". Credit given to TRIBiQ CMS in this way helps support our efforts to offer the CMS as a free system.
Commercial License
If a user purchases a Tribal Commercial License, TRIBiQ CMS may be operated free of the GPL and without needing this credit. However, other Commercial License terms apply and TRIBiQ CMS may not be redistributed.
There is a a Single-site Commercial License which allows TRIBiQ CMS to be used on a single site (website or extranet), with a single content database and on a single IP address.
A special Multi-site Commercial License is available with the TRIBiQ CMS Multi-site system. This allows customers to run any number of websites and content databases under a single global database and on a single IP address.
For enterprise users other options are available.
Under a Commercial License, TRIBiQ CMS is still available in open source form, so that designers and developers may still delve into the TRIBiQ CMS code and add their own enhancements.
Additional Commercial Modules
There are also additional Modules available for the Commercial License versions. These are available as either open source or runtime-only encoded source.
Benefits of a Dual Licensing Strategy
By adopting this dual license strategy, Tribal has the strength of large-number distribution associated with open source software, and the benefits this brings by people giving feedback on the product.
To balance this, we operate a commercial business which means we can provide reliable support to customers who need the backing of a commercial enterprise behind the software they choose.
TRIBiQ CMS is just one arm of Tribal Limted's broader business and with over 10 years' in the internet business we are a mature enough company and broad enough in our skill set, to offer such support.
