SchemaSmith License FAQ

Yes. The SchemaSmith command-line tools are free to use for any purpose — personal, commercial, internal, and educational — with no restriction on organization size, revenue, database size, or number of environments (§1a). There is no per-seat, per-server, or per-environment fee.

SchemaSmith is source-available, not open source. The full source is public, and you may read it, build it, and modify it for your own use (§1b). SSCL v2.0 is not an OSI-approved open-source license, because it restricts redistribution and offering the software as a service (§3). Software-composition-analysis (SCA) and SBOM tools that classify licenses by OSI status will report it as a non-standard, source-available license — see the next question for how to record it.

Use the SPDX custom-license reference LicenseRef-SSCL-2.0. SSCL v2.0 is not on the SPDX License List, so a LicenseRef is the correct way to name it rather than leaving it classified as “unknown.” The repository declares it machine-readably: the license text is at LICENSES/LicenseRef-SSCL-2.0.txt, and REUSE.toml assigns it to the SchemaSmith-authored source by path.

GitHub’s license detection reports this repository’s license as “Other” (NOASSERTION). That is expected for any license that isn’t on the SPDX List, and it does not affect the identifier above.

Yes — without restriction on organization size, revenue, database size, or number of environments (§1a). Internal commercial use across any number of teams, servers, and environments is permitted.

Yes. Using SchemaSmith to manage databases for your own products or services, whether you or your customers host those databases, is explicitly not redistribution (§3a). The license states this twice, the second time in a closing clarification paragraph.

Yes. Including SchemaSmith’s deployment components in your product’s installation or update process, solely to apply the database changes your own product requires, is explicitly permitted (§3a).

Yes. Setup, configuration, and implementation services that let you — the licensed user — operate SchemaSmith for your own use are permitted (§3a). The boundary is ongoing work on your behalf: a third party operating SchemaSmith as a perpetual database management, maintenance, or migration service, with SchemaSmith as the primary tool, is treated as offering the software as a service and is not permitted (§3a). A partner may help you stand it up; your own organization operates it.

The license lists four restrictions (§3). You may not:

• redistribute SchemaSmith, in source or binary form, as a standalone product, as a component marketed or provided to third parties within another product, or as a service, whether free or paid;
• offer it as a hosted or managed service (SaaS, PaaS, or similar) where third parties interact with SchemaSmith functionality;
• remove, alter, or obscure copyright notices, license text, or attribution;
• use the SchemaSmith name, logo, or branding to imply endorsement of your product or service.

Ordinary internal use and use for your own products, described above, are not affected.

Yes. Each contributor grants you a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive patent license to make, use, and run their contributions (§2).

No. Each version of SchemaSmith is governed by the license distributed with that version (§8). A later version may be released under different terms; those terms govern that later version, not the one you already have. Continuing to use the version you adopted keeps you on its terms.

No. SchemaSmith is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind, and the authors and copyright holders are not liable for claims or damages arising from its use (§5). This is standard for freely licensed software.

The laws of the State of Florida, USA, without regard to conflict-of-laws provisions, with exclusive jurisdiction in the state and federal courts located in Florida (§7).

The license terminates automatically on breach, and you must stop using the software (§6). If it is your first breach and you cure it within 30 days of becoming aware of it, the license is reinstated automatically. After a first breach, reinstatement requires written permission from the SchemaSmith project maintainers. Licenses you granted for your own contributions survive termination (§4, §6).

A contribution is licensed under the same SSCL v2.0 terms. You confirm you have the right to make it and, to the best of your knowledge, that it doesn’t violate anyone else’s intellectual property. You grant the SchemaSmith maintainers a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, modify, and distribute it in SchemaSmith’s database management products. You keep ownership of your contribution (§4).

Email support@schemasmith.com.

SchemaSmith doesn’t offer a standard commercial license today. If your organization’s procurement process needs something the SSCL doesn’t provide — a signed agreement, contractual protections, or different governing law — email support@schemasmith.com and we’ll talk about what’s possible.