External Email - Use Caution        

Thank you very much for your answer ! 

As we are a research laboratory and we only distribute open-source software absolutely free of cost I would assume we would not be bound by these fees but I wanted to make sure. What do you think ? As a reminder, we would distribute docker containers with clinica and Freesurfer binaries inside to make it easy for users to install, but not the Freesurfer license. It would still need to be acquired by the user to be able to run the container. I’ve seen other softwares do the same (fmriprep for example) but I do not know if it is because they had authorization from Freesurfer.

Best,

Alice

De : fsbuild <fsbuild@contbay.com>
Date : jeudi, 15 octobre 2026 à 12:51
À : freesurfer@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu <freesurfer@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu>
Objet : [Freesurfer] Re: [RE] Publishing a docker container with Freesurfer inside

Vous n’obtenez pas souvent d’e-mail à partir de fsbuild@contbay.com. Pourquoi c’est important
        External Email - Use Caution        
Re-distribution of Freesurfer source or binaries is subject to the license terms,
https://github..com/freesurfer/freesurfer/blob/dev/LICENSE.txt

The license states that Freesurfer is for research purposes only and not intended for clinical use,

4. The Software has been designed for research purposes only and has
not been reviewed or approved by the Food and Drug Administration
or by any other agency. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT CLINICAL
APPLICATIONS ARE NEITHER RECOMMENDED NOR ADVISED. Any
commercialization of the Software is at the sole risk of the party
or parties engaged in such commercialization. ...

The license also states that use is subject to all the terms of the sub-licenses (3rd party licenses) cited in the distribution,

3. This Software License does not grant any rights with respect to
third party software, except those rights that MGH has been
authorized by a third party to grant to you, and accordingly you
are solely responsible for (i) obtaining any permissions from third
parties that you need to use, reproduce, make derivative works of,
display and distribute the Software, and (ii) informing your
sublicensees, including without limitation your end-users, of their
obligations to secure any such required permissions.

Various 3rd party licenses can be found here (but I would also check the source code),
https://github.com/freesurfer/freesurfer/tree/dev/distribution/docs

My understanding is that once you bundle Freesurfer with any software or service that is a commercial product or charges a fee, then you are subject to the *commercial* terms of any 3rd party licenses.  That could require paying for a commercial license from one or more of the 3rd party license holders.   Your organizations legal counsel or legal department should review all the licenses and their terms.

- R.