A few critical binary 'black boxes' are at the J core. In particular, the J Engine (analogous to the Java Virtual Machine), the Windows GUI support, and the Unix GUI support are provided by Jsoftware as binaries for specific platforms. Most J users are happy to depend on Jsoftware for development and maintenance of these binaries. However, some users require source for some or all of the binaries.

Our policy on source for our binaries is between the extremes of Microsoft proprietary source and Linux open source. You can have the benefits of open source for J binaries, but under a license and a fee. Here are a few examples where one might want source for J binaries:

Your company builds products that depend heavily on the J Unix GUI support and your priorities may not align completely with Jsoftware. You could use Jsoftware consulting to develop your proprietary changes, but a source license gives you complete control to develop exactly as you require.

Your company builds products that depend on the J Engine and you want to be able to leverage your applications by programming both at the J level, and in C at the core engine level. Examples are language extensions, new primitives, new data types,  and performance improvements that are of significant benefit to your applications.

You (or more likely your CTO or CFO) find your company 'betting the farm' on J. By that we mean you are building products with J on which the future of your company or division depends. In situations like this business people concerned with risk start asking questions: "what if Jsoftware all got on a jet and went for a holiday and didn't come back?"; "what are our options if something totally unforseen happens?", and so on. These are serious questions, and too often the answer is "we can't afford the risk so we'll stick with Microsoft and IBM".

This is a hard problem for a small company like Jsoftware to address. A big truck could run over our entire company and there you'd be with J applications driving your profits and suddenly no more Jsoftware development and maintenance of the critical binaries. With source, any problem can be managed by you.

Jsoftware licenses source for all the Jsoftware binaries. There are several factors in determining the cost of source licenses. Primary is the source itself: J Engine (portable C); Windows GUI support (C++); and Unix GUI support (Java). Secondary is the scope of use: internal; distributed products; and  competitive (to Jsoftware) products. And finally the platforms: Windows; Unix; PocketPC; etc. The price range is from $10,000 to $400,000. Regular updates to our current source levels are available for separate update fees.

Contact us for more information.