Is it possible to use the Coin library without the restrictionsof the GNU GPL?

Yes, as a service for those who would like to use the Coin library in proprietary software, we at Systems in Motion offer the "Coin Professional Edition License" which buys developers that are license holders the option to use the library with no strings attached. The "Coin Professional Edition License" covers all the Coin libraries, unless otherwise specified.

By "no strings attached", we of course mean that you as a software developer would not have to obey the restrictions of the GNU GPL, as you would use the Coin library under our "Professional Edition" license instead.

The Coin Professional Edition License additionally covers other libraries in the "Coin family" for no extra cost, including all the GUI toolkits (SoQt, SoWin, SoGtk, SoXt, Sc21) and Systems in Motion's 3D file format libraries Dime and Profit.

See http://www.coin3d.org for more information about the details of these libraries.

Prioritized support services is also part of the package. Your support requests will be sent straight to the top of the todo-stack of our developers. The developers used as first-tier support for our Coin Professional Edition License holders are the same people who have written all the sourcecode of the library in the first place, so you will be in very good hands.

We take pride in giving our customers excellent support, and since the Coin libraries are what our developers love to work with, it's given with a smile. :-)

Oh, and one additional benefit from being a Coin Professional Edition License holder: you are allowed to cut'n'paste from our sourcecode and use it in your own applications without having to worry about licensing issues. This is for instance very convenient when writing extension components for Coin, like new nodes or action types.

You may also cut'n'paste code from all our example programs in the same manner (these are also originally under the GNU GPL, by the way).