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.