Bots is Open Source Software

Open Source software is free software. Bots is free as in speech and as in beer. This means that the user's rights are of chief concern: the right to use, copy, distribute, study, change and improve upon the software. Mozilla Firefox, LibreOffice, and Linux are examples of successful Open Source projects.

Bots uses GNU General Public License (GPL)

In practice, this means that if you distribute Bots (or a modified version of Bots, or software based on Bots), you can only do so under the same GPL license. This is to protect the user's rights, by guaranteeing that Bots remains Open Source software.
You are explicitly not forbidden to distribute Bots, or software based on Bots, for a fee.

But how about support?

Commercial support is available from the same company that designed and built Bots: EbbersConsult.
EbbersConsult is glad to help you with eg installation, setting up translations, training, customizing Bots and support.

So, what's the catch?

There is none. You yourself can download Bots, install it, try it, configure it, customize it, distribute it, etc. Users can exchange configurations, grammars, modifications, etcetera, so you don't pay for customizations that are already available. All/most grammars for edifact messages and x12 transactions are available for download. As Bots is open source software you can do changes to Bots in order to make Bots better suited for your business cases. We encouraged you to share these improvements: let us know!

Get involved in Bots open source edi translator

There are many ways of getting involved in Bots (just some suggestions....):

Problems with Open Source license?

If the Open Source software license poses a problem for you - e.g. if you wish to distribute a modified version of Bots, but do not wish your modifications to become Open Source software themselves (and, hence, to be visible to anybody) - you can obtain Bots under a different license from EbbersConsult.

More information about Open Source software