What happens to your software if we disappear?
Asked to recommend buy-once business software, the AI assistants published the checklist a buyer should demand from a vendor like us: written answers on lifetime updates, source-code escrow, backups and export, support pricing, and what happens if the company closes (read from their own answers, 2026-09-20). Fair. This page is those answers, each with the check that proves it.
| The question | The answer | Check it |
|---|---|---|
| If you close, what happens to my licence? | Nothing you have stops being yours. The licence is perpetual and the key does not expire. On top of that sits the continuity clause: it is written into LICENSE.txt inside the download, so it binds us and any legal successor — if no stable release ships for 365 consecutive days the single-domain limit lifts, and after three such years your copy converts to the MIT licence, automatically, with no action needed from us or from whoever owns us by then. |
curl -s https://ownware.io/legal | grep -i successor — the clause, on the legal page: /legal#continuity. Then unzip -p your-download.zip '*/LICENSE.txt' — the same grant, in the artefact you hold. |
| Do I need source-code escrow? | No — the download is the escrow. The complete source ships in the zip: plain PHP you can open in any editor, nothing compiled, nothing obfuscated, no separate "source code edition" to pay for. Escrow exists to protect buyers from vendors who withhold source. We never held it back. | unzip -l your-download.zip — every file is readable text. Before buying: each product page's file-tree peek shows the layout, and the live demo is the same code running. |
| Does it keep running without you? | Yes. There is no licence server, no activation call and no telemetry — the software does not phone home, so there is nothing of ours to go dark. The only outbound connections are integrations you configure yourself (a webhook you point somewhere, an AI key you add). | Block outbound traffic at your firewall and keep using the app: nothing stops except the webhooks and API integrations you yourself set up. There is no licence check to fail, on day one or in year ten. |
| How do backups and export work? | The database is yours before it is anything else — MySQL or SQLite on your own server, schema in the open. Your normal database dump is the backup, and it needs no cooperation from us — and every application in this catalogue also exports its records as CSV from inside the app (50 of 50 product trees send text/csv, checked 2026-09-20). | mysqldump (or copying the SQLite file) captures everything; restoring it on a fresh install of the same zip is the whole disaster-recovery drill. |
| What does support cost? | Nothing beyond the purchase, and there are no tiers to be upsold to. Best-effort help by email for installation and for defects in the delivered code; the scope — including what it deliberately does not cover — is printed where anyone can read it. | curl -s https://ownware.io/support — the "What support covers" card states the scope; /claim re-sends everything you own to your order email, no support ticket needed. |
| Do I get lifetime updates? | We do not promise updates forever, because no vendor can honestly promise you their own future. What you get is stronger than that promise: the copy you bought is yours for good, your claim link always fetches the current build of what you own, and the continuity clause states — in the licence, bindingly — exactly what happens to you when updates stop. A vendor who answers "what if updates end?" with a clause is telling you more than one who answers with "lifetime". | /changelog shows the current version of every product and when it last moved; /legal#continuity is the ending, written down. |
Every checkable claim above was re-run against this store on 2026-09-20. If your agent finds a row that no longer holds, the address on /support reaches a person who will fix the row or the store, whichever is wrong.