Please clarify commercial usage of Read the Docs

[svisser]

The website currently mentions that it's free but it's not explicit about commercial usage. This suggests commercial usage is allowed but I'm wondering whether that's the case and what the conditions (if any) are.

[ericholscher]

First off, I'm curious what you're using it for. Most of the commerical interest we've seen is in fully private docs, which we don't support.

Second, historically we haven't had a policy, presumably meaning that anyone can do whatever. Now that we are looking to be funded, I am considering adding something like "You must sign up for a gittip account and give someone money" or something along those lines to use it commercially. I am happy for commercial places to be using RTD, but I also want to help them along the path of giving back to the community.

Any input along those lines would be much appreciated.

[svisser]

Thanks for your quick response.

The documentation would be used for clarifying to external partners how to use the company's website and how to use the company's API. This can be publicly available documentation (if the company chooses to do so). In that sense it's similar to FAQ / help documentation and supporting knowledge base articles.

Ease of use would also allow tech-savvy business team members to write and extend the documentation as opposed to only the development team. For a practical example, please see: https://github.com/Rangespan/docs

I've heard of gittip and I think it's indeed fair to provide a payment option for commercial use.

[ericholscher]

We now have https://readthedocs.com for commercial use.

[ilukac]

Hi,

Sorry to comment on a close issue but didn't find any better way to ask. We have a bit specific situation for which is hard to figure out the answer. We are working on a product which will be soon available in an open core mode (core part opensourced with some features commercial as add-ons). The goal is to make a sustainable product like what you are trying to do with the rtd.com.

The product documentation will be mostly about the core part and we are preparing it to be available on a public repo for the whole product, including the smaller parts for addons, there is not much sense in dividing it. Now we are checking to use RTD but not sure if we can use the free option for our mostly but not completely open sourced product.

Could you confirm that we can use the free version? Or not :)