When and how long do I need a subscription

Commercial / Licences
1

Hello,

I’m about to start a closed-source project with regular GUI requirements and high audio requirements so I’m thinking about turning to JUCE rather than Qt (which I know quite well). However, I’d like to be sure how licensing works with JUCE.

Simply put, with Qt, one must have a valid subscription when developing and compiling executables. But once the subscription is over (and not renewed), one is still allowed to distribute the executables that were compiled when the subscription was still valid.

I’m not sure if it’s the same with JUCE. Actually, what I understood is quite the opposite. One can develop (and compile) executables without any subscription but one must have a valid subscription when the executable is distributed. Is that right? Because, that makes a major difference with Qt: as long as the executable is distributed, the subscription must be valid. So it’s kind of a life-recurring fee.

Anyway, if I’m turning to JUCE for a closed-source project, subscription is not a problem in itself. I just want to make sure I got it right do to things correctly. And also (again, if I understood correctly), that’d mean that I can save one or two months of subscription while I’ll develop the app.

Thanks in advance for your precisions.

Regards,

Mathieu

2

Hi Mathieu,

You are correct in your understanding of how the JUCE license works. Let me summarise our approach to licensing in a few bullet points:

  1. You don’t need a license while you are working on an unreleased product
  2. You still don’t need a license if you release your product as open source
  3. If you get a perpetual license, you own the code forever, but you will need to upgrade if you want to use further versions of the library
  4. If you get a subscription license, you benefit from upgrades of the engine at no extra cost, but you will need to pay a license for as long as your product is on the market
  5. finally, the license is per seat, so each developer working on the code of a released product needs to have a license

Hope that helps.
JB

3

Hi JB,

Thanks for summing this up. My apologies for this late reply.

I’ll get a subscription license (as a single developer) in a week or two once my product is finished and ready to be released.

Yours,

Mathieu