EnCOMPASS License

Licensing types available:

You may only use the EnCOMPASS Software and Materials under the terms of a license agreement which is based on your use of the software (commercial or non-commercial).

Guidelines to distinguish Non-commercial and Commercial Use of EnCOMPASS.

Whether a particular use of the EnCOMPASS Materials is "non-commercial" depends on the use, not the user, and to assist we have set out notes below:

  1. Non-commercial Use. We anticipate that non-commercial use will primarily involve students and teachers who may wish to use EnCOMPASS at home and in school or university for the purposes of their school or academic study and teaching, without intending to seek any commercial advantage or financial gain. This includes teachers in schools and universities where tuition fees are charged, so long as the use of EnCOMPASS is limited to personal or individual classroom teaching. 
  2. Commercial Use. We anticipate that commercial use will primarily involve publishers, online schools, schools or universities charging tuition or course fees where there is systematic or formal integration of EnCOMPASS within the curriculum, and non-profit organizations who wish to use EnCOMPASS to support activities that are intended toward securing a commercial advantage or the generation of revenue or monetary compensation.

Examples of commercial use might include:

These guidelines were last updated in Oct, 2018.

EnCOMPASS License FAQ

What exactly is the EnCOMPASS software?

When we refer to 'EnCOMPASS' software or as a product, we are really referring to the code and materials residing in the EnCOMPASS Github Repository

Who can use EnCOMPASS free of charge?

Please see 'Guidelines to distinguish Non-commercial and Commercial Use of EnCOMPASS.' above for how we distinguish non-commercial and commercial use.

EnCOMPASS and our web services are made available free of charge for non-commercial users (with an AGPL V3 License). Most of our users are students and teachers and they usually fall under our non-commercial license, allowing them to use and distribute EnCOMPASS and related materials free of charge at home and in school.

Commercial users pay a moderate license fee, which helps us to continually improve EnCOMPASS and keep it free for non-commercial users. If you are not sure whether your use is commercial or not, please just get in touch with us at sweimar@21pstem.org.

Is EnCOMPASS free and open source software?

EnCOMPASS is open source software and available free of charge for non-commercial users. You can find our EnCOMPASS Github Repository and we are open to collaborating with the open source community. Thanks a lot to all contributors of these projects for their great work!

Please note that EnCOMPASS is "open sourced", and not necessarily "free" software. It seems only fair that if someone is going to make money off of the EnCOMPASS software, that some of that revenue go back to supporting EnCOMPASS and other projects of Mathematical Thinking. You can rest assured that our license terms under the GNU AGPL V3 license have been checked by an experienced law firm.

Most importantly, EnCOMPASS will always continue to be available free of charge for students and teachers. For your convenience our Github repository includes instructions for installation. If you find any errors, or wish to have instructions for other versions of the Linux O/S, please let us know at encompass-dev@21pstem.org.

The developers of EnCOMPASS (Mathematical Thinking) are dedicated to the open source movement and collaboration with members of the FOSS community – please check out our EnCOMPASS Github Repository. Contact us if you'd like to help us make EnCOMPASS even better.

These license FAQs were last updated in Oct 2018.

If you have any further questions about EnCOMPASS’s license terms, please feel free to write to sweimar@21pstem.org.