wellformed

Wellformed
Copyright © 2026 Bram Luiken. All rights reserved.

Wellformed is private software. It is not open source today, and no part of it
is in the public domain. Every right in it — the copyright, and every other
right that attaches to software — is held by Bram Luiken and stays held by
him. Nothing is granted by implication, by silence, or by the appearance of
these files on any repository, mirror, snapshot, registry or server.

This licence has an end in it. Every version of Wellformed becomes open source
in time, on its own, with nobody having to ask — see "What happens when this
stops".


1. Possession grants nothing

You may not run, copy, modify, publish, sublicense or distribute this
software, in source or in built form, except under a licence granted in
writing by Bram Luiken. Having the files, being able to read them, or being
able to build them is not permission to use them.


2. What a licence is

A licence is a written agreement, granted to one named legal person, which
says who holds it and from what date. That agreement is the licence.

No file shipped with this software is a licence, a licence key, or evidence
that one exists, and no setting on an installation confers any right to run
anything. The agreement is the licence, and nothing else stands in for it.


3. What a licensee may do

Inside the boundary drawn in section 4, a licensee may do anything at all with
Wellformed. In particular they may:

  - run it, on as many machines as they operate, for as long as they like,
    with no ceiling on workspaces, rows, users or anything else;

  - use it commercially — as part of how they earn their living, inside the
    work they are paid for, on data they are paid to hold;

  - modify it, extend it, port it, and join it to their own systems;

  - give their own staff, contractors, clients, suppliers and members accounts
    in their own installation, in the course of using it themselves.

None of that needs asking, and no account of it is owed to anyone.

Updates are part of it. A licence covers Wellformed as it goes on: every later
version Bram Luiken makes available to the licensee falls under the same
grant, with no new agreement and nothing further to pay. It does not oblige
him to build any particular version, to keep building, or to hand over what he
has built.


4. The boundary: use, not exploitation

Wellformed may be used. Wellformed may not be exploited. It is never itself
the thing that is sold, hosted, handed on or given away — and this section
binds everyone: licensees, people using it for nothing, and anyone who comes
by a copy some other way.

Not as code. The software, or any modified version of it, may not be sold,
rented, lent, published, distributed, sublicensed or otherwise supplied to
anyone else, in source or in built form.

Not as a service. Wellformed, or anything substantially derived from it, may
not be offered to other people as a product or a service in its own right —
hosted on their behalf, resold as access, run as software-as-a-service, or
dressed up as a service whose substance is what Wellformed does.

Where the line falls. The question is whether Wellformed is the thing being
offered. Using it to run a business, do the work, or serve customers is use,
and stays use. That stays true even where those customers hold accounts in the
licensee's own installation. Offering Wellformed itself — under any name, to
people it was not granted to — is exploitation, whether or not money changes
hands.


5. Modifications

Wellformed may be changed as much as anyone likes, within whatever permission
they hold, and whatever original work they add in doing so is theirs.

It changes nothing else. The copyright in Wellformed stays with Bram Luiken,
in every modified version and in every version derived from one. A modified
Wellformed is still Wellformed for the purpose of this licence: sections 1, 4,
6 and 7 apply to the modified whole exactly as they apply to what was handed
over. Work added on top cannot be separated out and used to carry the software
past the boundary in section 4.


6. Who the licensee is

The licensee is the legal person named in the agreement, and no other.

It runs downwards. Entities that the named person controls — subsidiaries it
holds a majority of, or otherwise directs — are covered, as are staff and
contractors working on the licensee's behalf on the licensee's installations.

It does not run upwards or sideways. A parent, a holding company, a sister
company, a group the licensee belongs to, a franchisor or a joint venture
partner holds nothing by virtue of a licence granted to the licensee.

A licence does not travel. It cannot be assigned, sold, sublicensed or passed
on, and it does not move with the business in a merger, an acquisition or a
sale of assets, without the written consent of Bram Luiken. Where control of
the licensee changes hands, the new owner needs their own agreement.


7. Term

A licence, once granted, is perpetual. It does not expire, needs no renewal,
and no payment keeps it alive.

It ends in only two ways: by written agreement between the parties, or
automatically if the licensee crosses the boundary in section 4 and has not
put it right within 30 days of being told in writing. On termination the
licensee stops running the software and destroys their copies of it. Sections
1, 4 and 5 outlive the licence.


8. What happens when this stops

Wellformed is a running service as much as it is a program, and this section
says what becomes of the program if the service stops.

Bram Luiken publishes a signed statement at
https://grant.bramluiken.org/wellformed/maintained saying that Wellformed is
maintained, and through what date. It is renewed for as long as the software
is alive.

Every released version of Wellformed becomes available to everyone under the
GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 or later (AGPL-3.0-or-later) on
whichever of these comes first:

  - 12 months after the day that statement last lapsed, if it has not been
    renewed in the meantime; or

  - 10 years after the day that version was released.

A version is released on the day it is first made available to any licensee.

Neither of those needs a decision from anyone, and once a version has
converted it stays converted. The statement is what counts, not whether a
server answered on a given afternoon: an expired card, a DNS mistake or a
weekend of downtime converts nothing, and is not meant to.

Nothing here obliges Bram Luiken to keep publishing that statement. Not
publishing it is precisely how this section is triggered, and that is what it
is for — so that Wellformed outliving its author, or its author's interest in
it, does not leave anyone holding software nobody may repair.

Until then the sections above are the whole of what is permitted, and section
4 is not softened by the existence of this one.


9. No warranty

The software is provided as it is. To the extent the law allows, no warranty
of any kind is given, and Bram Luiken is not liable for any loss arising from
its use. Nothing here limits liability for intent or deliberate recklessness.


10. Law, and where to write

This licence, and any agreement granting one, are governed by the law of the
Netherlands.

For a licence, or a question about one you hold, write to
juridisch@bramluiken.org. That address publishes a PGP key through Web Key
Directory, so anything you would rather not send in the open does not have to
be. For anything else, contact@bramluiken.org.