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Trongate's Free Forever Promise

Trongate's Free Forever Promise

The Trongate framework and the Trongate Desktop App are free and will remain free forever.  That's a promise!

Unfortunately, there has been some misreporting on where Trongate stands, as far as price and licence agreements go. So, for the record, here are the facts.


Trongate Uses The MIT License

Trongate uses the MIT license. For those of you who aren't clued up on software licensing, the MIT license is the one that's generally considered to be 'the cool one'. The MIT license is the one that lets you use Trongate commercially. You can earn a living, sell Trongate applications, modify the code and generally behave like an ordinary web developer. Basically, the only thing that you can't do is pretend that you wrote the Trongate framework. That's reasonable.  That's normal. That's perfectly in alignment with the rest of the frameworks universe. There is nothing whatsoever unusual about that. There is no catch. You can relax. It's just an ordinary open source framework license.

What About The Desktop App?

Trongate has a desktop app (currently available for Mac, Windows and Linux). This desktop app allows us to do a variety of things that simply would not be possible with the command line interface. For example, Trongate is the only framework in the world that gives you a free graphical (SQL) query builder. This means that if you're building an application that requires advanced table joins, you can literally draw joins, between your tables, on the screen. In doing so, the desktop app will produce SQL for you. It's a beautiful system made possible by the fact that Trongate has a desktop app. Trongate also is the first PHP framework that gives users a credible alternative to Packagist. We call it, the Module Market and it's based on the Apple App Store.  The Module Market is Trongate's ecosystem for sharing code. Again, it's something that can be accessed via the Trongate Desktop App.


Here's what you need to know about the Trongate Desktop App:


1).  Like the framework, the desktop app is free.  There is no pro-version.  There is no upsell.  Free means 'free' and it will remain free forever.  Even if somebody buys or takes over Trongate then a pre-condition of that event would be that the Trongate Desktop App - with the framework - remains free.


2).  The Trongate Desktop App does not collect any user data or do anything uncool.  We have no means of tracking what you're building or what you're working on.  The Trongate Desktop App uses Electron and - when you use the Trongate Desktop App - it's actually just opening a headless browser that lets you navigate webpages that are being served directly from the Trongate website.  Your data and your privacy is being respected.  It's something we take very seriously.  Very soon, we'll be recording content for YouTube - showing you precisely how it all works behind the scenes.  What you'll find is an innovative system that has been designed to make web development easy.  Nothing more.  Once again, we have absolutely no means of figuring out what you're working on, looking at or studying your code.  The Trongate Desktop App absolutely does not store user data. 


3).  The Trongate Desktop App is optional.  That's right.  It's 100% optional.  You don't need to use it, if you don't want to.  As a matter of fact, it's entirely possible to use the Trongate framework - quite happily - without the desktop app.  Indeed, you can even use Composer and Packagist with Trongate.  When you use Trongate, you are in charge of your code and you are also in charge of your workflow.

The Bottom Line

You can use Trongate safe in the knowledge that it will always be free forever.  That includes both the framework as well as the desktop app.  While I have your attention let me also reassure you, I will never sell any certification for Trongate.  I have no desire whatsoever of being some kind of standard setter, governing body or code police.  Finally, let me stress in the strongest terms possible that Trongate does not collect any user data whatsoever.  There's no mechanism for figuring out what you're building.  There is nothing uncool and it's all free. 


You have my word.


David Connelly



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