Software license
Sannerlab MIT-like Source-Available License, version 1.0
The Sanner Lab’s software is distributed under the Sannerlab MIT-like Source-Available License, version 1.0, reproduced below. It applies to every tool on this site: ADCP, ADFR, AGFR, AutoSite, ADapt, WEWoS, MGLTools and MSMS, with one exception for MSMS:
For MSMS, this license applies to non-commercial use only. This covers the standalone MSMS program and the MSLIB library that ADFRsuite and MGLTools use to compute molecular surfaces. Commercial use of MSMS needs a separate commercial license: contact Dr. Michel Sanner.
Questions about the license: contact Dr. Michel Sanner.
Copyright © 2026 Prof. Michel F. Sanner and Scripps Research
All rights reserved except as expressly granted under this License.
1. Grant of License
Subject to the conditions, limitations, and exclusions set forth in this License, permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person or legal entity obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (collectively, the “Software”) to:
Use, execute, and reproduce the Software;
Modify, adapt, merge, and create derivative works of the Software;
Publish, distribute, and sublicense the Software;
Distribute or sell copies of the Software, including modified versions;
Permit others to whom the Software is furnished to exercise these rights, subject to the terms of this License.
This permission is granted without restriction on commercial, academic, educational, scientific, or other fields of use, except as expressly provided in Sections 2 and 3.
No rights are granted to Excluded Persons or Excluded Organizations.
2. Excluded Persons and Organizations
2.1. Excluded Persons
For purposes of this License, an “Excluded Person” means any individual who, at the time of the activity in question, falls within one or more of the following categories:
This exclusion applies only during the period of the individual’s employment, appointment, or formal laboratory affiliation.
(a) Schrödinger Personnel
Any individual currently employed by Schrödinger, Inc., or any of its parent companies, subsidiaries, or controlled affiliates (collectively, “Schrödinger”), including:
Full-time and part-time employees;
Officers and directors who are employees;
Research scientists and software developers;
Other individuals working under an employment relationship with Schrödinger.
This exclusion applies regardless of whether the individual’s proposed use of the Software is professional, academic, commercial, or personal.
Former employees of Schrödinger are not excluded solely because of their previous employment.
Independent contractors, consultants, and scientific advisers are not Excluded Persons solely because of those relationships unless they are also employees as defined above. Activities undertaken on behalf of an Excluded Organization remain subject to Sections 2.2 and 4.
2.2. Excluded Organizations
The following are designated “Excluded Organizations”:
(a) Schrödinger, Inc., including its parent companies, subsidiaries, and controlled affiliates.
(b) Any legal entity acting as an agent of, or under the direction of, an Excluded Organization for the purpose of acquiring, operating, evaluating, or otherwise using the Software on behalf of that Excluded Organization.
2.3. Duration of Individual Exclusion
An individual’s status as an Excluded Person shall be determined at the time the individual undertakes the relevant activity involving the Software.
An individual who ceases to meet the definition of an Excluded Person may thereafter exercise the rights granted under this License, provided that the individual otherwise complies with its terms.
The end of an individual’s excluded status does not retroactively authorize activities undertaken during the period of exclusion.
The organizational exclusions in Section 2.2 remain in effect regardless of changes in individual personnel.
2.4. No Grant of Rights to Excluded Parties
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, no license, permission, or authorization is granted to an Excluded Person or Excluded Organization to exercise copyright-controlled rights in the Software for activities from which that person or organization is excluded under Section 2.
This exclusion applies to activities undertaken directly or indirectly, whether for commercial, academic, scientific, educational, nonprofit, internal evaluation, personal, or other purposes.
3. Credits
The licensee will acknowledge the use of the Software that results in any externally published work, including scientific papers, articles, films, videotapes, CD’s, or DVD’s, by citing the following reference(s) for the program used:
- ADCP: Zhang, Y.; Sanner, M. F. AutoDock CrankPep: combining folding and docking to predict protein–peptide complexes. Bioinformatics 2019, 35 (24), 5121–5127. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btz459; and Zhang, Y.; Sanner, M. F. Docking flexible cyclic peptides with AutoDock CrankPep. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2019, 15 (10), 5161–5168. doi:10.1021/acs.jctc.9b00557
- ADFR: Ravindranath, P. A.; Forli, S.; Goodsell, D. S.; Olson, A. J.; Sanner, M. F. AutoDockFR: Advances in Protein-Ligand Docking with Explicitly Specified Binding Site Flexibility. PLoS Comput. Biol. 2015, 11 (12), e1004586. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004586
- AGFR: Zhang, Y.; Forli, S.; Omelchenko, A.; Sanner, M. F. AutoGridFR: Improvements on AutoDock Affinity Maps and Associated Software Tools. J. Comput. Chem. 2019, 40 (32), 2882–2886. doi:10.1002/jcc.26054
- AutoSite: Ravindranath, P. A.; Sanner, M. F. AutoSite: an automated approach for pseudo-ligands prediction, from ligand-binding sites identification to predicting key ligand atoms. Bioinformatics 2016, 32 (20), 3142–3149. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btw367
- MSMS: Sanner, M. F.; Olson, A. J.; Spehner, J.-C. Reduced surface: an efficient way to compute molecular surfaces. Biopolymers 1996, 38 (3), 305–320. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-0282(199603)38:3<305::AID-BIP4>3.0.CO;2-Y
- MGLTools: Sanner, M. F. Python: a programming language for software integration and development. J. Mol. Graphics Mod. 1999, 17 (1), 57–61. PubMed 10660911
- WEWoS: Sanner, M. F.; Stoffler, D.; Olson, A. J. ViPEr, a Visual Programming Environment for Python. Proceedings of the 10th International Python Conference, 2002. Paper
4. Prohibited Activities
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, and insofar as the copyright holder possesses the legal right to restrict the activity, Excluded Persons and Excluded Organizations are not authorized to engage in the following activities to the extent prohibited by Section 2.
4.1. Downloading and Acquisition
Downloading, cloning, copying, reproducing, retrieving, or otherwise acquiring copies of the Software, including its source code, executable binaries, or modified versions, from any source.
This includes obtaining copies through:
Public or private code repositories;
Software distribution websites;
Package managers;
Download servers and archives;
Third-party distributors;
Collaborators or other intermediaries.
4.2. Evaluation and Benchmarking
Installing, executing, testing, evaluating, validating, profiling, or benchmarking the Software.
This restriction expressly includes:
(a) Comparing the Software with competing software products, algorithms, or computational methods.
(b) Measuring the Software’s accuracy, performance, speed, reliability, or functionality.
(c) Using the Software to generate results for scientific publications, technical reports, product evaluations, or competitive analyses.
(d) Evaluating the Software for potential incorporation into commercial or academic products, services, or workflows.
(e) Conducting internal testing, proof-of-concept studies, or feasibility assessments.
No license-based exception is granted for evaluation, benchmarking, or research purposes.
4.3. Use and Execution
Using, running, executing, or operating the Software for any purpose, including:
Scientific research;
Academic or educational activities;
Commercial product development;
Internal company research;
Personal projects;
Software testing;
Computational analysis;
Data processing;
Method development or validation.
4.4. Modification and Derivative Works
Modifying, adapting, translating, merging, incorporating, or creating derivative works of the Software.
This restriction also applies to incorporating any copyright-protected portion of the Software into another software package, computational workflow, or commercial product.
4.5. Redistribution and Sublicensing
Reproducing, distributing, publishing, sublicensing, selling, or transferring copies of the Software or derivative works.
4.6. Indirect Use
An Excluded Person or Excluded Organization may not circumvent the restrictions of this License by arranging for another person or organization to exercise licensed rights in the Software on its behalf.
This includes:
(a) Commissioning or directing a third party to execute or benchmark the Software.
(b) Engaging contractors, consultants, collaborators, or service providers to operate the Software on behalf of an Excluded Person or Excluded Organization.
(c) Using hosted computing environments or cloud services to execute the Software through an intermediary.
(d) Arranging for another party to acquire, modify, or distribute the Software on behalf of an Excluded Person or Excluded Organization.
This provision does not prohibit independent research by otherwise authorized users merely because its published findings may subsequently be read or cited by an Excluded Person.
4.7. Restrictions on Licensees
A licensee may not knowingly distribute, sublicense, or provide copies of the Software to an Excluded Person or Excluded Organization for activities prohibited under this License.
A licensee may not knowingly act as an intermediary to circumvent the exclusions established by this License.
5. Redistribution and Attribution
The copyright notice, this License, and all exclusion provisions must be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
Redistribution of modified versions is permitted only if:
(a) The original copyright notices are preserved;
(b) This License is included with the redistributed Software;
(c) The restrictions applicable to Excluded Persons and Excluded Organizations are preserved;
(d) Any modifications are clearly identified as modifications when reasonably practicable.
No redistribution or sublicense may grant rights to an Excluded Person or Excluded Organization that are withheld by this License.
6. Third-Party Components
This License applies only to software and other materials for which the identified copyright holder has authority to grant the rights described herein.
Third-party components incorporated into or distributed with the Software remain subject to their respective licenses.
Nothing in this License shall be construed to restrict rights independently granted under applicable third-party licenses.
7. No Implied Rights
The public availability of the Software, including its availability through a publicly accessible repository, website, package manager, or download service, shall not itself constitute a grant of rights beyond those expressly provided by this License.
No permission is implied from possession of a copy of the Software, prior access, or prior use.
Nothing in this License restricts rights that cannot lawfully be restricted by copyright license, including applicable statutory exceptions or rights independently granted by third parties.
8. Termination
The rights granted to a licensee under this License automatically terminate upon a material violation of its terms.
A person who becomes an Excluded Person during the term of this License shall have no authorization to undertake activities restricted by Sections 2 and 4 while that excluded status continues.
An individual who ceases to be an Excluded Person may subsequently exercise the rights granted under this License, subject to compliance with its terms.
Termination of one licensee’s rights shall not automatically terminate the rights of other licensees who remain in compliance with this License.
10. Disclaimer of Warranty
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES, OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF, OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OF OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW.
11. Severability
If any provision of this License is held invalid or unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, that provision shall be enforced to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.
The remaining provisions shall remain in effect to the extent legally permissible.
12. License Classification
This License is a custom permissive source-available software license.
It is not the MIT License, the BSD License, or an Open Source Initiative-approved open-source license.
The restrictions in Sections 2 and 4 intentionally distinguish this License from licenses satisfying the Open Source Definition.
13. Reservation of Rights
All rights not expressly granted under this License are reserved by the copyright holder.
No trademark rights, patent rights, or other intellectual-property rights are granted except to the extent expressly stated herein.
End of License — Version 1.0