FAQ: Gen - Code Export Licensing

Previously, code exported from Gen was under a permissive license for any usage. Cycling ’74 retained copyright over the exported code, and we required our copyright and license to be included in any such usage of the exported code. As of Max 7.3, the license has changed to place restrictions on commercial use of the Gen exported code. For all personal and non-commercial use of exported code, the license is free and the spirit of the license remains the same.

If you are an entity with under $200k in annual revenue or funding, you pay nothing for commercial use of the Gen exported code. If you are an entity with over $200k of annual revenue or funding, we require a $200/year fee per Max user license for commercial use of the Gen exported code. If you are using Gen exported code for commercial purposes in either case, please contact us at licensing@cycling74.com about licenses for commercial use.

Max patches, Max standalone applications, and Max for Live plugins that use Gen also have no change. It is only the license for exported C++ source code that has changed.

No. Cycling ’74 has always retained the copyright over the Gen exported source code. That copyright is not a patent or any other claim on your algorithms or your Gen patcher, but pertains to the text of the generated code.

This is simply a clarification of the definition of copyright as recommended by our lawyers. Previously the license included the words “Copyright Cycling ’74.” The new text is more precise, specifying that Cycling ’74 is the “author for copyright purposes.” So for example, you could be the author for some other purpose, such as filing a patent.

We love making tools for creative minds to make amazing things. We want to be able to keep doing that in the future.

The software pricing landscape has changed considerably over the life of Cycling ’74. To remain competitive with the increasing number of software development tools in the world, our prices have dropped considerably. In light of such overall trends, many software businesses have moved to a model where they are able to meet these individual software pricing expectations by increasing their business-to-business revenue in order to be able to continue developing software.

We feel that source code export is one area we can explore this possibility of creating value for larger businesses within a hybrid model where we can continue to make the software more affordable for individuals and more powerful for everyone.

We’re currently putting significant effort into code export technology and we would like to make sure that we are able to justify ongoing work in this area. Specifically for Gen, we’ve put in some time to make it more suitable for ARM and embedded Linux systems, and we will soon be releasing some examples of that workflow. We felt the need to make the licensing change now because we believe our future development work will be of increasing interest to individuals and businesses alike.

No.

Yes. You can download it from the Older Downloads page.

Please get in touch with us at licensing@cycling74.com -- we'd be happy to talk about the licensing change and how it affects your individual use of Gen's code export feature.