Licensing Information

All production manifold.net software is licensed, not sold, using our standard Manifold End User License Agreement. Please read the agreement to be sure you agree with its terms and provisions before ordering software. 

Academic Licenses For Manifold System GIS

Academic Licenses cover the current edition of Manifold System GIS only. 

These licenses are available only to customers purchasing Manifold System licenses directly from Manifold Net Ltd. 

Academic Buyers:  Use Manifold System 7x to teach introductory or advanced GIS, mapping, Internet map serving, remote sensing, image processing, graph theory, networking concepts, data mining and databases as they apply to GIS.  You can even operate university programs using Manifold. Buy ONE copy of Manifold System under the  Academic License and you may be licensed to make an unlimited number of copies and installations at your academic institution for non-commercial education and research purposes. You can even use Manifold to administer your academic institutions facilities.  Here's how:

• Purchase one copy of Professional Edition at the regular price ($245 + shipping). 
• Print out two copies of the Academic License on your printer.   
• A person authorized to sign contracts for your institution must initial each page of both licenses, and then must sign both copies of the license on the signature page.
• Return both copies in their entirety to manifold.net.  Faxes are not acceptable.  The entire license must be returned.
• If your application is approved, we will countersign one copy and return it to you and email you that your academic license has been granted.  
• The Academic License will grant Ultimate Edition licenses even though only Professional Edition was initially purchased.  We want our Academic licensees to have the entire product with all options! 

There is no need for special qualification by manifold.net - as a qualified Academic Institution your license becomes operational when we sign it and return it to you. It's that easy!

Please send your signed copies of the Academic License to Academic License Administrator / 1805 North Carson Street, Suite 700 / Carson City, NV 89701 / USA.  License processing requires four to eight weeks from the time we receive your signed copies before a signature is applied and the license is issued for return to you.

Academic License holders are responsible for communicating the availability of Manifold to users throughout their institutions.  One objective of the Academic License program is to recruit License holders to actively communicate news of Manifold System throughout their institutions.  If you acquire an Academic License and other departments or users within your institution contact manifold.net to purchase Manifold System without realizing that an Academic License is already held by you, those sales will go through and are not refundable.

Very Important: Please take note of the following to avoid delays in the processing of your Academic License, a rejection of the application or cancellation of your Manifold license:  

• Before submitting the Academic License paperwork, your institution must have purchased at least one copy of Manifold System (any non-runtime edition).  If your Academic License paperwork is received and our legal department cannot find a record for a previously-acquired qualifying license, the paperwork will be rejected.  Do not send your license paperwork with a purchase order at the same time thinking the two will be processed simultaneously, because until the purchase order is paid you do not have a qualifying license and the Academic license will not be processed.
• The Academic License is not valid until Academic serial numbers have been issued to your institution after manifold.net has received and processed your license. Some academic users think all they need do is buy one copy and then as soon as they mail the Academic License paperwork they can make and use as many copies as they like.  That is not true.  The qualifying unit purchased initially is a regular commercial license and cannot be shared.  If you install it on multiple machines Manifold will sooner or later detect a license violation and will automatically shut down your license.  After an Academic license is granted manifold.net will send a block of special Academic serial numbers for your use.  These serial numbers have the special property that the same serial number may be used on multiple machines in the same local network and will not cause a license violation reaction.
• Academic licenses are a donation, not an entitlement, made at the sole and exclusive determination of manifold.net. An Academic license application may not be approved if manifold.net chooses not to donate to your institution.  
• No Academic license will be granted to institutions in any jurisdiction where making such a donation will require manifold.net to file any paperwork with regulatory authorities. For example, no Academic license will be granted to any state university or college or other agency in Indiana because the Indiana Department of Revenue has claimed that making such a donation would require manifold.net to file annual tax returns in Indiana. Regulatory requirements discovered after the fact will result in cancellation of any Academic license already granted.
• Although it is true that applications are almost automatically granted, manifold.net reserves the right to decline to donate an Academic license to any particular institution. Any purchase of Manifold software does not guarantee that subsequently an Academic license will be granted upon application, and any paperwork for a purchase that implies an expectation of such a guarantee will not be processed.  For example, at times manifold.net will receive a purchase order from a university for an "Academic License" of Manifold System with a purchase price indicated of $245.  Such POs will not be processed, as there as no such thing as being able to buy an Academic license.

A note to Academic License holders for prior releases:  Your Academic License for releases of Manifold earlier than the current 7x release does not include Manifold System Release 7x.  You must sign the 7x license and purchase a copy of 7x to get the 7x Academic License.  The Academic License for Manifold System Release 7x Professional Edition is slightly stricter than the Academic License for earlier releases.  It requires designation of an Administrative and a Technical contact on behalf of the institution to streamline communications and it requires that such designees have the technical skills and administrative authority to fulfill their duties.  Download the Academic License

FAQ:

Does it matter what edition of Manifold System I procure as my qualifying license?  - No. Any purchase of Manifold System qualifies, regardless of what edition or product bundle you choose. No matter what version you initially procure, you end up with an Ultimate Edition Academic license when the Academic license is donated. Requiring a purchase solves several tactical problems in the granting of Academic licenses:

• It assures that the person applying for an Academic license knows what Manifold is. manifold.net does not want to expend resources processing such licenses for people who are just tire kickers or collectors of freeware.
• It assures that the person applying has some bona fide position within their organization, as people with no status whatsoever usually cannot get the organization to purchase even a single license. That increases the likelihood that the organization will respect the terms and conditions of the Academic license.
• It provides at least one Manifold installation CD from which Academic license installations can be installed. Manifold CDs are "multiversion" so that even if you initially get Professional Edition you can still get a Ultimate installation from that CD.

If you get the Geocoding Data product initially, then you can use that under your Academic license as well.

Beta Test Licenses

Beta Test Software:  From time to time, manifold.net makes beta versions of software available for testing by an extended population of users.  Provision of such beta test versions is covered by the Beta Test / End User License Agreement.   Please review this agreement before downloading any beta test software that may be provided to you by manifold.net.

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