You are not allowed to sell, assign, license, disclose, distribute, or otherwise transfer or make available Kirby or its Source Code, in whole or in part, in any form to any third parties.
According to above quoted paragraph from Kirby License, a web company is not allowed to purchase Kirby license and sell and distribute the final product build on top of Kirby to a client.
Further more, it seems also not to be allowed to charge in any way for the final product build on to of Kirby. E.g. SaaS which would license and make available Kirby to clients (third party).
How then a website build on top of Kirby can be legally sold or license (SaaS) to a client without the need for them to directly purchase Kirby license?
Thank you for the pointer. Unfortunately it doesn’t really clarify the issue at hand.
The post you are referring to says:
It should be fine to “rent the license out”…
However, the Kirby license says:
The license is… generally non-transferable
You are not allowed to sell, … distribute, … or make available Kirby …, in any form to any third parties.
Frankly, I fail to see how a developer or an agency could charge legally for anything build on top of Kirby
A welcome consideration would be an update to the Kirby License, where in addition to reviewed Restrictions, you’d to provide a clear section of what is allowed.
Sorry for the confusion here. We do of course support the model that you as an agency or freelancer buy a license for your customer and build a website for them. This is very common and done over and over again. In this case we are also happy to transfer the license from you to your client later if needed. Just send us an email in that case.
What we don’t support are businesses that buy licenses to redistribute them in any form as a new kind of stand-alone product.
Here are a few examples what we don’t support:
You build a theme and buy a Kirby license to resell it as a theme+Kirby bundle afterwards
You fork Kirby and sell the modified version
You buy licenses in bulks and resell them at a lower price in your own Kirby license shop
You build a website builder like Wix or Squarespace on top of Kirby and run that with your own license for multiple users
Basically any form of reselling or distribution that would damage our core business.
Adding examples to the license text could be a good idea, but preferably you should really just get in contact if you are in doubt.
Thank you very much for the extensive clarification.
What you said aligns with what I was thinking at first. However, as I was kindly reminded by colleges, at the end of the day the only binding statement is what the license says.
I’d like to ask about a slightly different scenario that I think might sit somewhere between the supported and unsupported use cases. I’m working on a SaaS product built on top of Kirby. It’s not a website builder in the sense of Wix or Squarespace, but rather a focused application that offers users their own personal or business space (e.g. portfolio, analytics dashboard, internal tools, etc.), each powered by an isolated Kirby instance.
A few key points:
Each user would get their own instance of Kirby running in a subdirectory or subdomain (not a multisite setup), isolated from others.
Users would not interact with the Kirby backend directly — they’d use a custom UI or flow.
I would be the one maintaining the codebase and infrastructure.
The product would offer free trials or tiers, and the monthly price (especially early on) could be lower than the cost of a single Kirby license.
The service would not include any bulk license reselling or public redistribution of Kirby itself.
Would there be a way to work with you to license this fairly under your current model? I want to respect your licensing terms and support Kirby’s business, while also being able to prototype and grow my product without hitting steep costs too early in the process.
I’d be happy to explore options like:
Buying a license per active user/site once they convert from trial
Revenue-based pricing or special SaaS arrangement
Limiting usage in free tiers
Anything else that makes it sustainable and fair for both sides
You may make Kirby available to customers via a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, provided You ensure that each Website has a valid Kirby license purchased either by You or Your customer. If multiple customers share a Website, each customer needs at least one license. Your offering must not appear to be provided or officially endorsed by Us.
So as long as you have a pool of licenses activated to your platform’s domain that contains at least as many licenses as you have active Kirby installations, you are good to go. This means that Kirby licenses can be reused for different installations on the same platform as long as the total sum matches (you don’t need to throw away any licenses if one customer cancels their subscription and another starts one).
Looking forward to your thoughts.