SteelFrame (z/OS-compatible) and SteelFrame X (IBM i-compatible) are proprietary software, licensed per instance and backed by support & maintenance: you report a defect, we fix it and ship the fix. This page sets out how that works: what the licence covers, what it does not, the support response targets and how fees are structured.
//* LICENCE proprietary · licensed, not sold · per instance, key-enforced //* SCOPE training · development · test · demo/POC · conformance bench //* · modernization rehearsal. Production: not yet licensed. //* SUPPORT you report bugs, we fix them: patches + versioned releases, //* upgrades included while support & maintenance is active //* RUNS hosted by us · BYOC on your AWS/Azure · on your premises //* (air-gapped supported) — same licence everywhere //* FEES licence fee + annual support & maintenance · quoted, not listed
The software is licensed, not sold. Your agreement grants your organisation the right to use it for the licensed scope, on the licensed instances, for the licence term. All rights not expressly granted are reserved to CobolStack.
| Type | Proprietary, commercial licence. Title to the software stays with CobolStack; you receive a right to use it. |
| You may | use the licensed instances, seats and cores within the licensed scope (below); build, run and test your own programs, data and estates on them. |
| You may not | modify, reverse-engineer, decompile or disassemble the software; redistribute or sublicense it; or offer it, or anything derived from it, as a hosted or managed service to third parties. In short: no competing service built on it. |
| Enforcement | Technically enforced by licence entitlements and keys issued per instance. An instance runs what its entitlement covers. |
| Audit | Usage is subject to audit against the licensed instances, cores and seats, as set out in your agreement. |
The same licence applies wherever the software runs. You choose the deployment; the licence, the scope and support & maintenance don’t change with it.
| Deployment | What it means | How the licence is delivered |
|---|---|---|
| Hosted by us | We run a single-tenant instance for you; you use it in the browser. Nothing to install. | Entitlement managed by us for the hosted instance |
| BYOC | Installed in your AWS or Azure account. Your data and programs stay in your cloud; an optional agent dials out to us for licence and upgrade management and never accepts inbound connections. | Signed entitlement, issued per instance |
| On your premises | Installed on your own servers, in your data centre, on hardware we can help you set up. Air-gapped sites are supported: no connection to us is required to run. | Signed offline entitlement file per instance, with its term, seats and core limits |
On-premises and BYOC installs keep your source code and data inside your own perimeter. We only see what you choose to send us, for example a defect report. See environments for the environment shapes.
SteelFrame is a testbed today, and the licence says so. It covers every non-production use an estate team has:
| Use | Typical shape | Licensed |
|---|---|---|
| Training | cohort and self-paced seats, shop-standard images | Yes |
| Development | developer seats with the Studio workbench | Yes |
| Test | project integration and UAT sandboxes with masked or synthetic data | Yes |
| Demo / POC | synthetic estates for demos, tenders and proofs of concept | Yes |
| Conformance bench | the ISO 20022 rehearsal rig | Yes |
| Modernization rehearsal | a mirror of your estate's shape for rehearsing changes and replaying cycles | Yes |
| Production | running live business workloads | Not yet |
Production use is not licensed until the production runtime clears all five gates on the capability page: staffed production support model · written production SLA with liability cover · source escrow · one reference workload 90+ days in production · completed security assessment. Targeted end-2027. Until all five hold, it is a testbed and we call it a testbed.
Support & maintenance (S&S) is how the software stays correct once you are using it. You report a bug; we reproduce it, fix it, and deliver the fix.
| Reporting | you report defects and questions to support@cobolstack.com; each report is assigned a severity from the table below |
| Fixes | delivered as patches and as versioned releases, through the release/upgrade path with rollback that every instance already has |
| Upgrades | new releases are included while S&S is active |
| Eligibility | fixes, patches and upgrades are for customers on active S&S |
| Severity | Meaning | Response target | Resolution target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sev 1 | environment down | 1 hour | workaround within 24 hours |
| Sev 2 | major function broken | 4 hours | fix in the next patch |
| Sev 3 | minor defect | 1 business day | fix in the next release |
| Sev 4 | question or cosmetic issue | 2 business days | as scheduled |
These are targets, not a service-level agreement. The binding service levels are the ones in your signed agreement. A production-grade SLA with liability cover is one of the production gates above; it is not offered yet.
| Licence fee | an annual subscription, or monthly for instances we host |
| Support & maintenance | annual, priced as a percentage of the licence fee |
| Metering | per instance, per core or per seat, depending on the environment shape |
We don't publish prices. Every quote is sized to your estate, environments and team.
SteelFrame and SteelFrame X are independent clean-room implementations, built from published specifications. They are not IBM products, and contain no IBM code. Specification-conformant, never "identical": your licensed system remains the sole conformance authority. That is what lets us license them to you directly.