Last week, the Neo4j community announced that the Neo4j Enterprise Edition will be available under a commercial license. The source code is available only for the Neo4j Community Edition. The Neo4j Community Edition will continue to be provided under an open source GPLv3 license.
According to the Neo4j community, this new change won’t affect any Neo4j open source projects. Also, it won’t create an impact over customers, partners or OEM users operating under a Neo4j subscription license.
The Neo4j Desktop users using Neo4j Enterprise Edition under free development license also won’t get affected. It doesn’t impact the members of Neo4j Startup program.
The reason for choosing an open core licensing model
The idea behind getting Neo4j Enterprise Edition under commercial license was to clarify and simplify the licensing model and remove ambiguity. Also, the community wanted to clear the confusion regarding what they sell and what they open source. Also, the community wanted to clarify about options they offer.
The Enterprise Edition source and object code were initially available under multiple licenses. This led to multiple interpretations of these multiple licenses which ultimately created confusion in the open source community, in the buyers, and even in legal reviewers’ minds.
According to the Neo4j blog, “ >99% of Neo4j Enterprise Edition code was written by individuals on Neo4j’s payroll – employed or contracted by Neo4j-the-company. As for the fractional <1%… that code is still available in older versions. We’re not removing it. And we have reached out to the few who make up the fractional <1% to affirm their contributions are given proper due.”
Developers can use the Enterprise Edition for free by using the Neo4j Desktop for desktop-based development. Startups can benefit through the startup license offered by Neo4j, which is also available now to the startups with up to 20 employees.
Data journalists, such as the ICIJ and NBC News can use the Enterprise Edition for free via the Data Journalism Accelerator Program. Neo4j also offers a free license to universities for teaching and learning.
To know more about this news, check out Neo4j’s blog.
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