Commercial licence

FoxSDR is free for noncommercial use. This page describes the terms for using it in a business. The noncommercial licence is here.

FoxSDR is free — permanently — for noncommercial use under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0. If you are a hobbyist, that is the end of the matter: there is nothing to buy, nothing to register, no key, no trial period, and no feature is held back from you.

Any commercial use requires a separate licence. It is paid for every tier except one: shops that include FoxSDR with the radios they sell are licensed free, as Retail Partners. The paid tiers are where this project earns its keep.

Which one applies to me?

You are covered by the free noncommercial licence if you are:

• an individual using it for a hobby, personal study, experimentation or private entertainment;
• an amateur radio operator, SWL or enthusiast;
• a charity, school, university, public research body, public safety or health organisation, environmental organisation, or government institution (regardless of how you are funded).

You need a commercial licence if you are, for example:

• using it in the course of a business, including purely internally;
• selling it, or selling a product or device that includes it;
• bundling it with hardware you sell (free for shops: see Retail Partner below);
• using it to deliver a paid service to customers;
• building a product derived from it that you intend to sell.

If you are unsure, ask. Genuine hobby use is meant to be free, and asking costs nothing. We would far rather answer a question than have anyone quietly overstep.

Evaluation

Any company may evaluate FoxSDR commercially, free of charge, for 60 days, for the purpose of deciding whether to license it. Email the address below and say so — a one-line reply confirming your evaluation window is all it takes. Evaluation does not cover shipping anything to your own customers.

Licence tiers

All commercial licences are annual. Each includes every update released during your licence term, and email support.

Prices are in GBP and exclude VAT. Rates for the OEM and Redistribution tiers depend on volume, on what you are actually building and, for OEM, on how much driver work your hardware needs — the figures above are starting prices, not a rate card.

Retail Partner: free for shops

A business that sells radios may include FoxSDR with them free of charge, with no agreement to sign and no invoice. This section is the permission. It covers:

• a download link, a printed card or a QR code in the box, on the product page or in the order confirmation;
• a copy of an official release on a USB stick or disc shipped with the radio;
• FoxSDR preinstalled on a computer the shop sells.

On three conditions: the copy is an unmodified official release, it keeps the FoxSDR name and the licence notices, and it is not sold or charged for separately from the hardware. Rebranding it, modifying it or preinstalling it on hardware you manufacture is the OEM / Bundled tier.

The permission runs for 12 months at a time and renews automatically, at no charge. If it is ever changed, that will be announced on this page at least 90 days ahead and apply only to later terms; every copy a shop has already distributed stays licensed permanently.

We would be glad of a one-line email to [email protected] saying you are doing it, so we know and can thank you, but it is a request and not a condition.

What a commercial licence gives you

• The right to use, modify and distribute the software commercially, within the scope of the tier you hold.
• All updates released during your licence term.
• Email support, with a target first response of two working days.
• For OEM and Redistribution licensees: input into the roadmap, and reasonable notice before anything that would break a shipped integration.
• For OEM licensees: support for your hardware. FoxSDR's driver for it is kept working with every release during your term, and new firmware revisions and new models you tell us about are supported with reasonable efforts. This is part of what the fee pays for.

What happens if I stop paying?

You keep what you already had. On non-renewal, your right to use and — for the OEM and Redistribution tiers — to keep distributing the versions you received during your paid term continues perpetually. You simply stop receiving new versions and support.

This matters if you ship hardware: you cannot recall units already in customers' hands, so a licence that evaporates on non-renewal would be one no manufacturer could reasonably sign. Ours does not.

Can I modify it?

Yes, under either licence. The noncommercial licence expressly permits changes and new works — but a modified version is still bound by the same terms, so it remains noncommercial-only unless you hold a commercial licence. You must also pass on the licence terms and the Required Notice: line to anyone you give a copy to.

How to buy

Email [email protected] with:

• who you are, and the legal entity that will hold the licence;
• what you want to build or do with it;
• roughly how many users, seats or units;
• whether you intend to redistribute.

You will get back a completed copy of COMMERCIAL-AGREEMENT.md — the actual terms — and an invoice. Nothing is hidden behind a sales process.

Notes

• Third-party components bundled with this software (Dear ImGui, GLFW, PortAudio, nlohmann/json, pffft, SoapySDR) remain under their own permissive licences and are unaffected by the terms above. They may be used commercially in their own right; see installer/THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.txt, which is also installed alongside the application.
• The plugin interface (src/core/plugin_abi.h) is MIT-licensed on purpose, so anyone — including commercial vendors — can write plugins for this application without needing a licence from us.
• Plugins are not covered by this licence. Each plugin carries its own terms, stated in the plugin catalogue and displayed in the application before installation.
• We do not police hobbyists. There is no activation and no licence check in the application, and nothing reports who you are or what you use it for. The anonymous usage report described in the privacy notice counts launches, modes and plugins, carries no identity, and can be switched off. The commercial tiers work on self-certification, the same way every source-available business does.

Contact

Steven Fox — [email protected]
Anything that is not a licensing question: [email protected]