ClearCanvas has always believed that as a company, we need to do more than build great software and generate revenue. And because we work in the health-care industry, we believe that our corporate mission is to improve the lives of everyone involved: from patients, to technologists and radiologists, to solution providers, to our own employees. So for us, building software in the health-care industry has come to mean three things: 

Accessibility. We want people to have access to our software regardless of location or budget. If our software can improve the lives of people who need it, then we want our software available to meet that need.

Empowerment. We want to empower people implementing software solutions in the health-care industry. Instead of feeling locked-in to expensive solutions that don’t meet their needs, we want people to have the ability to freely modify our software in whatever way necessary to improve the service they provide. 

Sustainability. We want to provide high-quailty software to the health-care industry, and enable others to do the same, whether creating new solutions, reselling existing products, or offering consulting and technical support.

For these reasons, ClearCanvas has made the principles of Open Source software an important part of how we do business. This allows us to guarantee that people interested in our software are free to use and modify it however they see fit, encourage sharing changes openly so others can benefit, and to ensure that anyone who sells and supports our software is free to make a living doing so.

In order to fully realize the values of accessibility, empowerment, and sustainability through our software, we have adopted a dual-licensing model based on the Open Software License v3.0 (OSL) and the ClearCanvas Proprietary Source Code License (PSCL).

Open source releases of our software are licensed under the OSL, a copyleft license that requires any redistribution of software, with or without changes, to pass along the freedom to further copy and change that software. At the same time, people are free to distribute, use, sell, and offer support for that software however they see fit.

For companies and developers who want to customize our software while also maintaining proprietary control over their changes, we offer the ClearCanvas Proprietary Source Code License.

The Open Software License

The Open Software License v3.0 (OSL) requires that all derivative work must also be licensed under the OSL. This means that anyone who modifies our source code (including rebranding the software), re-compiles it and distributes the resulting binaries, must:

1. License the modified source code using the OSL.
2. Make the modified source code available to the public. This can be achieved by doing one of the following:
   1. Including the modified source with the distribution.
   2. Hosting the modified source code in the author's own repository, or a public repository such as SourceForge.
   3. Submitting the modified source code to us as a patch.
3. In the case of b) or c) above, inform the public where to look for the modified source code, in say, the license file.

Since ClearCanvas software supports plugins, the original source code does not need to be modified to extend the functionality of the software. Plugins may be licensed and distributed however the author sees fit.

The ClearCanvas Proprietary Source Code License (PSCL)

The ClearCanvas Proprietary Source Code License offers flexibility to companies and developers who require proprietary licensing as part of their business model. For more information about our PSCL, contact sales@clearcanvas.ca.

The ClearCanvas License (Modelled after the New BSD License)