Purpose Source License 1.0, in plain English

Quick facts

• Published by: the Purpose Source Association, Aarau, Switzerland, on 2026-10-01
• Full text: purposesource.org/license/PurposeSource-1.0.txt

What may I do with the software?

You may use, copy, change and share it (§3), on the conditions below. Each contributor grants this for their own work, including a licence for any patents they can license that their contribution, alone or combined with the software, necessarily uses.

Who can use it for free?

• Individuals, for personal use that is not work for an organisation (§4).
• Organisations that are not large, for their own work (§4, §5).
• Non-profits (including public-benefit bodies barred from distributing profit), public educational institutions and public bodies performing public functions, for their own use, whatever their size (§5).
• Large organisations, to evaluate it, review its security or contribute to the project, outside production and without offering its functionality to others (§4).

What counts as "large"?

An organisation is large if its group, taken together, had 100 or more people, or one million US dollars or more in revenue, in each member's latest completed tax year (§5). The group is the organisation and every organisation that controls it, that it controls, or that shares a controller with it, directly or indirectly (§2).

• People are employees and individual contractors with ongoing engagements, part-time included, averaged over month-ends.
• Revenue leaves out investment raised and dealings between the members counted.
• No completed tax year? Use today's headcount, and revenue since formation scaled to a full year.
• A company controlled by a non-profit or public body above is measured like any other, without any such body's figures.

You assess your own size; nobody may audit you under this licence or demand your books, headcount or any certification (§5).

What does a large organisation need?

1. A fee for the software you use, or one annual Pass for all software under this licence (licence summary), agreed separately with the Association. Fees follow its published schedule, the same for everyone, for up to a year at a time. The licence sets no price (§2): see the pricing page.
2. A free waiver from the project's maintainers (whoever administers its main repository, or whoever they name through the Registry), published in the Registry. They can exempt any organisation for as long as they choose, revoke it for the future only, and hide its name in the public entry (§2, §9).

Nobody has to pay. Without either, use beyond the free uses is simply not licensed; the 60 days below are the only grace period (§4, §6).

What if we have no fee or waiver yet?

You have 60 days to arrange one (§6). They start, for example, when the tax year that made you large ends, when your fee or waiver ends, or on your first day of use that needs one, but never before that day. Covered, or no longer needing to be, in time? Nothing is interrupted. If not, permission stops after day 60 and returns, for use from then on, when either becomes true.

Each piece of software has its own count, at most 60 such days in any twelve months; waiting, restarting, updates, forks or renaming add no days by themselves. Free evaluation or contribution days do not count, and §6 adds time when the Association could not issue fees.

Where does the money go?

The Association handles fees and buyer contracts, so maintainers never have to. It forwards 100% of the net proceeds to the listed charities after published, capped costs, and publishes every amount it passes on (licence summary). Its published constitution says funds go to charity, with no distributable private profit (§2).

What about maintainers and contributors?

• Authors keep their copyright and maintainers keep control; both can help choose the charities their work supports (licence summary). The Association does not own or license your code (§2).
• Contributions: anything you intentionally submit to the project is offered under this licence unless you clearly say otherwise (§3). You also accept that recorded fees and waivers count for your code (§9).

I work for clients. Whose size counts?

Use as an organisation, or in work for it as its employee, contractor or service provider, is use for that organisation (§4).

• Work done only for one client comes under that client's fee or waiver, and needs none if the client is not large.
• A general service for many customers is your own use; a dedicated deployment for one customer is work for that customer.
• Merely passing the software on, or benefiting incidentally, is not use for an organisation.

What happens after four years?

Four years after a part of the software was first public under this licence, it receives the copyright and patent permissions of the Apache License 2.0, a widely used open-source licence. The large-organisation condition then stops applying to it (§7). Each part has its own clock, but every part in a version gets there within four years of that version first being public. Forking or repackaging never restarts a clock, and nobody can extend the four years for anything already public (§7).

What do we keep when a fee or waiver ends?

Code your fee or waiver covered, and that was public by the time it ended, stays your organisation's to use for good, in forks and modified copies too: it has "vested" (§9). A waiver vests nothing in its first 72 hours; after that, while it lasts, code it covers vests once public.

• Groups: a fee or waiver covers the organisation it is recorded for and those it controls, while it controls them; a parent or sister company only if named. A subsidiary that leaves its control keeps what had vested for it; a covered business sold or merged keeps its vested code for its own operations, not the buyer's (§9).
• Exceptions: nothing vests from a forged record, or from coverage obtained by fraud or deliberate deception. Nor does a waiver vest for an organisation, or those it controls, that knowingly got it for a benefit or through a separate fee for filing or promoting the request; a promised or indirect benefit counts (§9).
• Refunds: a fee refunded or charged back in full vests nothing for that term, unless the refund was for the Association's own failure; use during that term, before the refund, stays lawful (§9).

Vesting is permission from then on; it never excuses earlier unlicensed use.

Does it ask anything of my own software?

No (§10). It asks for no disclosure, audit or report. You never have to give anyone source code, even people who use your software over a network, or put your own code, or your changes to this software, under it.

When you share the software, or a substantial part of it, keep the licence text and every copyright, patent and attribution notice you received; a copy missing one loses the permissions until it is put back (§11).

What if the Association stops?

The large-organisation condition ends for everyone on the first of these days (§8):

• the day the Association ceases to exist without a successor named in a signed Registry record;
• the last day of any twelve months in a row in which it neither recorded a fee nor logged in the Registry a dated statement that fees can be obtained; or
• the day a signed Registry record names as the day it stops issuing fees.

Is it open source?

Not as the Open Source Initiative defines the term, because of its condition on large organisations.

Anything else?

• Patents (§3): if you or anyone in your group sues claiming the software, or a contribution in it, infringes a patent or helps infringe one (counterclaims count), your group's patent licences for it end, even for vested code. Your copyright licences stay.
• The name (§12): you may say software is under this licence only if you ship the licence text unchanged; nothing in it stops you describing software factually.
• No warranty (§13): the software comes as is, and no contributor is liable for damages from it, as far as the law allows.

Where can I read more?

• Options and prices: purposesource.org/pricing
• The public Registry: purposesource.org/registry
• Where the money goes: purposesource.org/transparency