Discontinuation of the Source Code license

From GemBox’s beginning, more than 16 years ago, we have offered an option to purchase a source code license for our products.

Over time we have invested a lot into our existing products. We added a lot of new features, improved existing ones, and also added some new products. With that in mind, any leak of our source code, from any of our users, could cause great damage to our company.

We are proud of our technical support and their ability to promptly respond and fix all reported bugs, usually in just one business day. To maintain such speed, one of the requirements is a good CI/CD process. Releasing source code setups drastically complicates this process.

Our users, both new and existing ones, notice everything that we do over time. The number of sold licenses, of all types, is increasing for all our .NET components, except for the source code licenses. Source code license sales remain low.

Based on all this, we decided to discontinue offering source code licenses for new users. We understand that you want to be secured from GemBox going out of business. Because of that we have added the following part into our EULA:

9. BUSINESS CONTINUITY: If for any reason, including insolvency or dissolution, GemBox ceases to trade under the GemBox name or another name, GemBox will provide the Licensee with the option of purchasing a non-exclusive copy of the source code for the SOFTWARE PRODUCT for which the Licensee has already purchased a non-exclusive, revocable license for the LICENSE TERM. The fee for purchase of a non-exclusive copy of the source code will be no more than two (2) times the cost of a 1 Developer License at that time. Some proprietary portions of the source code may be provided in a compiled form only.

We plan to keep source code support for all users who have already purchased source code licenses. If you are an owner of our source code license, and you still need the source code for our components, just open a ticket for our support team and they will send you the source code for the newest version of our components, or generate a custom offer to renew your source code license, if needed. The price of renewing the license will stay the same.

We’d like to thank you for supporting us all these years, and are open to any questions you may have about this.