Free static code analyzer

AsyaUnicorn

Let's imagine an individual developer, who writes and sells some game, for example. His code is closed, and used for commercial purposes. Nevertheless, we would be glad to help him get acquainted with the methodology of static code analysis, and provide a free license for him. This is a sort of promotional step that could get compensated later. At this point this is an individual developer, but who knows what may happen in the future.

On the other hand, let's take a team of 50 people working in a large company, and creating a free open source project. They sit in an office, eat company cookies, have a fixed income, and position themselves as idealists in the sphere of open source development. Yes, they are making a free product, but the company gets the revenue from it by indirect means. For a number of reasons, it is beneficial for the company to keep this project open and free. It seems quite fair to us that such an organization should purchase a license in order to use the analyzer.

As you see, the criterion "a free program", or "open source code" doesn't suit us in making a decision. We would like to separate the projects being developed in a company, from projects of small-sized enthusiastic teams. We could do that solely by a license agreement, but in this case it's hard to distinguish between different types of projects. In addition, this will be of little help to us in terms of promotion. Let's be honest, big companies provide free licenses for the sake of advertisement. We are no worse and no better than others in doing the same.

The solution came quite naturally; What is the main difference between large corporate projects and the code of enthusiastic teams? Corporate projects have much less freedom, and more bureaucracy. It is unlikely that Microsoft's management would be pleased if a Microsoft Office developer wrote in the code that it is his personal project. We thought we could use this, and suggest making comments in the code, which would make reference to PVS-Studio. In addition, the code of open source projects would promote PVS-Studio.