Free Software
The escrow agreements described above are most applicable to custom-developed software which is not available to the general public. In some cases, source code for commercial off-the-shelf software may be deposited into escrow to be released under a free software or open source license when the original developer ceases development and/or when certain fundraising conditions are met. This model is also called ransomware. The Blender graphics suite was released in this way following the bankruptcy of Not a Number Technologies; the widely used Qt toolkit is covered by a source code escrow agreement secured by the "KDE Free Qt Foundation".
Read more about this topic: Source Code Escrow
Famous quotes containing the word free:
“A distinction of property results from that very protection which a free Government gives to unequal faculties of acquiring it.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)