Relicence to dual-licenced AGPL-3.0-only + commercial with CLA

[ptheywood]

Relicense FLAME GPU 2 to dual licence AGPL-3.0-only + commercial.

Why a dual licence model for FLAME GPU 2

Developing and maintaining research software is hard, especially software like FLAME GPU which requires highly skilled GPU developers. Very little funding exists for development or maintenance. FLAME GPU 2 was extremely fortunate to receive a large chunk of funding for its initial development via a Research Software Engineering Fellowship. Funding to support new features is often sought through collaborative research projects with partners wishing to apply FLAME GPU to a new domain. As the software has become mature and stable it is becoming harder to seek research grants which look to add novel new features (constituting software engineering research). Instead funding is required to maintain what we already have.

Why a dual licence model for FLAME GPU 2

Developing and maintaining research software is hard, especially software like FLAME GPU which requires highly skilled GPU developers. Very little funding exists for development or maintenance. FLAME GPU 2 was extremely fortunate to receive a large chunk of funding for its initial development via a Research Software Engineering Fellowship. Funding to support new features is often sought through collaborative research projects with partners wishing to apply FLAME GPU to a new domain. As the software has become mature and stable it is becoming harder to seek research grants which look to add novel new features (constituting software engineering research). Instead funding is required to maintain what we already have.

Commitment to Open Source

First and foremost FLAME GPU is committed to open source, in particular in ensuring that the results of FLAME GPU simulations are FAIR and that the software itself remains open and accessible, preventing it from becoming proprietary. If you use FLAME GPU as part of your research and want to publish the resulting model and outputs you can do so under the AGPL v3.0 terms.

A Commercial Licence

The move towards a dual licence allows us to pursue commercial routes for FLAME GPU to generate revenue to support the software and to help understand its industrial impact. As a FLAME GPU user, this means that if you do not want to comply with the AGPL terms then a commercial licence would be required. I.e. If you want to build a model or product using FLAME GPU and distribute this without releasing the source code then a commercial would eb needed. There is not a fixed licence fee, instead this is negotiable depending on your use case and may require terms to help us understand and demonstrate the impact of the software. If you would like to find out more then please contact us

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• Licence file + metadata updated to AGPLv3
• Dual-licence text added to README.md and CONTRIBUTING.md
• CLA bot GitHub actions workflow, using a vendored action and PAT
• Licence update to AGPL + Commercial and CLA flamegpu.github.io#10 must be merged prior to this

[mondus]

Requires hash update in main FLAME repo

[github-actions]

Thank you for your submission, we really appreciate it. Like many open-source projects, we ask that you sign our Contributor License Agreement before we can accept your contribution. You can sign the CLA by just posting a Pull Request Comment same as the below format.

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I have read the CLA Document and I hereby sign the CLA

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