Alfresco Software Ltd. Licensing Policy

Alfresco has developed a content repository system designed to improve the collaboration, control and compliance of business documents, web content, and associated business processes. Our mission is to better meet the needs of our customers by making our software based on open standards and ensuring freedom and peer review by making our source code available. We want to enable any developer to use the Alfresco repository model to maintain and manage content, whether that developer is an open source developer, or a commercial developer, or both.

Alfresco Software Ltd. provides its software (enterprise content management system, web content management system) under a number of flexible licenses, designed to meet the particular requirements of different types of users:

For Open Source Projects

  • If you are developing and distributing open source software under the GNU General Public License (“GPL”), then you are free to use Alfresco under the GPL License. More Info

  • If you are developing and distributing open source software under an OSI-Approved License, but not the GPL, and want to link Alfresco’s GPL software with yours, Alfresco provides the GPL License with a FLOSS Exception. More Info
  • For more information on developing with Alfresco and our contributions policy, please click here.

For Commercial OEMs, ISVs and VARs

For OEMs, ISVs, and VARs who distribute Alfresco with their proprietary products, and do not wish to license and distribute their source code under the GPL, Alfresco provides a flexible OEM Commercial License. For more details please see our OEM Program Information.

For Enterprises, Government Organizations, Small-to-Medium-sized Businesses

Alfresco licenses Alfresco Enterprise under a Commercial License to paid subscribers, similar to how MySQL, Red Hat, and other leading open source companies license their technology.  Those wishing to use Alfresco for free under the GPL should download Alfresco Community.  Our Alfresco Enterprise software solution is the industry’s leading enterprise content management system.  It comes with full enterprise-class production-level support; documentation; certification of a range of third-party databases, middleware, operating systems, and applications; timely resolution of bugs or other errors in the code; and updates and upgrades. More Info »

Alfresco Software believes that open source is a disruptive force for helping enterprises maximize the value they get from content management. We encourage everyone to publish open source software under the GPL License.

For a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), please click here.