FastReport License Agreement: Translation from Legalese into Human

Not long ago, at a seminar following a presentation, I received a great question about our new license agreement:

"We’ve been using your libraries and components for generating reports for many years, but in 2024 you changed the terms to stricter ones. Do you want all our money?"

Well, no, of course not! We want much more! :)

But seriously — let’s figure it out together:

https://www.fast-report.com/license/license-agreement-delphi

3. LICENSEE OBLIGATIONS; WARRANTIES; AND PROHIBITED CONDUCT

3.1 Prohibited Conduct. The Licensee shall not:

(c) publish or otherwise make the Software available to any third party, or copy, lease, distribute, transfer, or reprint the Software or any part of it, except as explicitly stated in this Agreement and allowed by the purchased License;

(d) change the names of files in the Software;

(e) remove any references to the intellectual property or copyright of Fast Reports;

(f) include the Software in a development environment, framework, report generator, or ERP, CRM, BPM, or ECM system without prior written permission from Fast Reports;

(g) create a Solution that does not differ significantly from the Software, or whose main functionality is largely based on the functionality of the Software;

(h) develop and/or distribute stand-alone report generators based on the Software;

(i) develop and/or distribute a Solution (free, shareware, commercial, or otherwise) that directly or indirectly competes with the Software;

(j) use the Source Code of the Software to create any software or product (free, shareware, commercial, or otherwise) that directly or indirectly competes with Fast Reports’ Software;

(k) directly or indirectly disclose the Source Code or any solutions discovered through use of the Software to any party involved in the creation of software that directly or indirectly competes with Fast Reports’ Software;

(l) distribute the Source Code of the Software;

(m) hack, reverse engineer, translate, or decompile the Software, or use its Source Code and/or other components to create other programs or applications (including, but not limited to, freeware, shareware, or commercial software) that directly or indirectly compete with or replicate the functionality of the Software, without prior written permission from Fast Reports;

(n) disclose the Source Code, Object Code, program code, or other parts of the Software, or methods of implementing its functionality, to any person involved in creating other programs or applications that directly or indirectly compete with or replicate the functionality of the Software, without prior written permission from Fast Reports.

What does this actually mean?

Let me try to translate it from legalese into plain human language.

1. Regular, specialized products do not require any additional licensing, even if they use an independent visual report designer.

2. You may not distribute our source code (which is obvious).

And what isn't allowed?

3. You can’t create report generators. We’ve clearly specified this in item (h), as well as in (i) — “products that compete with ours,” and (g) — “products whose main functionality is based on ours.”

Here’s a particularly important point. I originally formulated it for our lawyers as:

“a product that itself produces products or artifacts containing report generators.”
The lawyers rewrote it as:

4. Including the Software in a development environment, framework, report generator, or ERP/CRM/BPM/ECM system (item f).

Why?

Because systems like ERP, CRM, BPM, and ECM are often highly configurable, essentially development platforms or tools.

Was this clause present in the previous license agreement?

Yes, it was — practically in the same wording.

Do our competitors have similar clauses?

Yes, we’ve specifically researched the EULAs of our respected competitors. One way or another, such restrictions are always there.

Does this mean “it's impossible to use and completely prohibited unless we talk to you”?

No! If something seems impossible, but you really want to do it, you can always discuss it and come to an agreement.

Think of this as an invitation to a new level of cooperation!

We already have many OEM partners around the world using FastReport in their development environments, in CRM/ERP systems, and even in their own report generators for other platforms.

In fact, with Embarcadero, we have a very similar partnership: we provide licenses for distribution within their development tools! :)

We even have a dedicated department to handle these kinds of requests. They’re not "sharks" — they’re kind and attentive colleagues. If you have specific needs or want to extend the functionality of the Software, we’re always open to discussion. We're ready to explore collaboration opportunities.

And in any case, you can always write to me directly.

Sincerely,
Michael Philippenko