Who can use GhostDoc Community Edition

Applies to
  • GhostDoc Community v2018 or newer
GhostDoc Community Edition is a lighter version of our commercial offering providing the starter set of features free of charge to freelance developers, startups, students, and open source enthusiasts. GhostDoc Community is licensed for personal, open-source, or educational use as defined in GhostDoc Community EULA

Who can use the Software

Rights to use GhostDoc Community depend on the customer segment and usage scenarios as explained below.

Individual developers

Any individual developer can use GhostDoc Community, to create their own or paid apps.

Organizations

  • An unlimited number of users within an organization can use GhostDoc Community for the following scenarios
    • in a classroom learning environment
    • for academic research
    • for contributing to open source projects
  • For all other usage scenarios
    • In non-enterprise organizations, up to 3 users can use GhostDoc Community
    • In enterprise organizations (meaning those with over 250 PCs or over one million in annual revenue) no use is permitted for employees as we as contractors beyond the open-source and educational  scenarios above

Commercial License

Users not in the Community Edition customer segments and usage scenarios above need to purchase a commercial license of GhostDoc Pro or GhostDoc Enterprise.

Example 1

A University wants to use GhostDoc Community for training students enrolled in the "Programming C#" course and for "AI and Cloud" academic research projects. The University also plans to customize its internal LOB software and is contracted with a third-party company to deliver a software project. GhostDoc Community use is allowed by academic institutions for a classroom learning environment and academic research, and hence the University can use the software for its coursework and the research project. However, GhostDoc Community cannot be used for developing and testing its internal LOB applications and the third-party contract work

Example 2

A Fortune 500 company has outsourced the development of its mobile application for an online store to a small firm. The application is not an open-source project. The firm has 3 employees working on the project and would like to use GhostDoc Community. Since the firm is a contractor developing this application for the Fortune 500 company, and since the application is not an open-source project, the firm cannot use GhostDoc Community for developing and testing the application.

Example 3

A Fortune 500 ISV is working on a web application that is released under the Open Source Institute-approved open source licenses. Employees and contractors developing and testing this application may use GhostDoc Community.