CENOS & third-party open-source tool licensing

CENOS connects the most powerful engineering open-source tools to the CENOS platform providing its users a seamless and easy-to-use simulation workflow for an affordable cost. As a part of the wider developer community, CENOS team takes licensing questions very seriously.

Open-source licensed third-party libraries, such as FreeCAD, ParaView, and others are irrevocably treated by the CENOS platform as third-party software under their own licenses – mostly GPL and LGPL, without any hiding or deficient communication from our side. Quite the opposite, we are proud to provide our users access to the best-in-class open-source tools developed by a wide community of professionals and hobbyists.

Whenever the CENOS team makes a bugfix or essential contribution to open-source libraries, we are happy to share them with developers of original source for further improvement. As an example, we have very good cooperation with Netgen and GetDP developers.

In order to provide users with a smooth and convenient set-up experience, we have included some third-party plugins, particularly FreeCAD plugins, into the CENOS installer. When the software is installed, users can find the source code (Python) of the aforementioned plugins in a separate folder – nothing is hidden or obscured. CENOS does not integrate third-party plugins into its own code but treats them as third-party libraries. It is explicitly highlighted in the CENOS Antenna Design terms & conditions. (GPL license allows to include plugins into installer)

Here is what we mean by saying that we take licensing questions seriously – we do the code audit regularly in order to prevent any license violations; when we notice any contribution to the open-source libraries made by CENOS software developers, we are happy to give our work back to the community.

Furthermore, we just launches our Community License program offering a free version of CENOS Antenna Design (for academic and non-commercial use) with the aim to give back to the community students, researchers, academics, HAM radio operators, hobbyists can apply here.