Software AG is a Darmstadt-based software vendor[1] whose licensing picture changed fundamentally between 2024 and 2025. The vendor now describes Software AG as a brand of Software GmbH, owned by Silver Lake, with its products licensed through Software GmbH subsidiaries and distributors.[3][1] The broad integration and IoT portfolio that many customers remember has been sold off, so the question “who is my licensor?” must be answered before any compliance work starts. This article gives the overview; the linked articles cover the mainframe licence check, the legal notices and the portfolio changes.
Who licenses what
On 2025-01-07 Software GmbH announced that, after the July 2024 divestments of the webMethods, StreamSets and TrendMiner businesses, it had closed the sales of Alfabet and Cumulocity. It described Software GmbH as continuing to be the holding company for ARIS, Adabas & Natural and Software AG’s central functions, and said the strategy was to operate Adabas & Natural and ARIS as standalone businesses, each led by its own management team.[3] The same announcement says webMethods, combined with StreamSets, was acquired by IBM in July 2024.[3]
The current Software AG website lists three products under Products: Adabas & Natural, CONNX and JOPAZ.[6] The A-Z page lists Adabas (with add-ons such as Caching Facility, Cluster Services, Delta Save, Encryption, Event Replicator, Fastpath, Adabas for zIIP, Manager, Online System, Parallel Services, Review, SAF Security and SQL Gateway) and Natural (with products such as Natural for z/OS, Natural for Linux and Cloud, Natural for Ajax, Natural Construct and Natural for DB2).[6] ARIS documentation is now published on a separate ARIS documentation site, but the documents there still carry the Software GmbH copyright and licence-agreement references.[7]
Practical consequence: a licence agreement signed with Software AG, a Software AG subsidiary or a distributor remains the contract that governs, whichever business unit’s product it covers. Entitlement for a product that has since been sold needs to be checked with the buyer, and the wiki does not cover those products’ current terms.
The document stack
Public Software AG licensing documents are thin compared with other vendors, because commercial terms are customer-specific. Three layers are public.
- Legal notices. The notice for all Software GmbH products (version mark ALLv202601) has Part A (general terms), Part B (additional terms for a commercial licence) and Part C (an evaluation licence for trial versions). Part A says the Product may not be installed or used without a corresponding licence agreement, and Part B provides that the commercial agreement does not allow sublicensing, renting, assigning or leasing and bars reverse engineering and further copies.[1] The preamble says installation or use indicates acceptance of the terms.[1] An older notice for the Adabas, ApplinX, crossvision, EntireX, Integrated Services Framework, Natural and Tamino lines still sits in the product documentation with similar wording.[9] See Software AG legal notices and licence terms.
- Product licensing guides. The mainframe licensing guide explains that licence files are XML documents holding the customer, an encrypted key, expiry and environment details such as CPU ID, LPAR ID and capacity in MSU.[4] See Software AG mainframe product licensing.
- Free-use licences. The Docker images licence and the evaluation licence are free-of-charge limited-use licences.[5][1]
Quantities, metrics, term, price and the audit mechanism sit in the commercial licence agreement and in the licence file, neither of which is public. The legal index page lists further documents (privacy policy, export control compliance, acceptable use policy, patents) and third-party licence texts available to Empower users only.[2]
Enforcement by licence file
For mainframe products, enforcement is technical. The vendor explains that it introduced the licence check “to ensure that customers run our software products only on mainframe machines for which they have valid and sufficient product licenses”, and that the check has existed for many years on UNIX and Windows.[4] The licence is checked at product initialisation and once a day, with warnings starting 30 days before expiry.[4] That means compliance on the mainframe is partly a matter of having the right licence file for each machine, and partly a matter of the contract’s capacity quantity matching the licence file.
Free and limited-use licences
The evaluation licence allows trial use on a single computer, workstation or terminal for evaluation and testing, for no longer than 90 days from installation, with no commercial production use.[1] The Docker licence (version 2025.1) is free, indefinite, covers internal production use on the number of computers specified in the product documentation, and excludes support, updates and maintenance.[5] These matter for asset managers because container images can be pulled by developers without any purchase order.
ARIS
ARIS cloud documentation describes sizes S to XXXL with environment-wide limits and states that customers must agree that anonymised usage events are sent to a metering system.[7] The client installation guide says users need ARIS Architect or Designer licence privileges and that support is provided to licensed customers through the Empower Portal.[8] See Software AG portfolio changes: webMethods and ARIS.
Support portal
Empower is the vendor’s support portal. The ARIS installation guide states that support for Software GmbH products is provided to licensed customers via the Empower Portal and that many services on the portal require an account.[8] Entitlement evidence (licence files, downloads and fix access) therefore flows through Empower, and an inventory of who holds Empower accounts is a useful companion to the licence records.
Litigation
The wiki has one case article involving Software AG, which concerned a distribution relationship rather than customer licensing: Software AG v. Consist Software Solutions, Inc. The court records are cited in that article. It is relevant to resellers and distributors, and its lessons are about contract termination rather than software metrics.
Checklist
- Identify the contracting entity on each agreement and whether the product was among those later sold.
- Collect every licence file and check CPU ID, LPAR ID, MSU capacity and expiry date against the machines in use.
- Inventory Docker image use and evaluation installs, and confirm they stay within the free licences.
- Keep the version of the legal notices (for example ALLv202601) that applied when the software was installed.
- Record Empower account holders and download history as entitlement evidence.