Licence and usage rights
Software
WinStars 3 is proprietary software by Franck RICHARD, distributed free of charge. Every feature of the software is available to everyone: there is nothing to buy, no “pro” version, no paid option, no advertising. Acquiring the software is therefore never a condition for reading the pages of this manual.
Usage
You may install and use WinStars 3 on the machines at your disposal, without time limit and without any registration.
The versions published for Windows, Android, GNU/Linux and Raspberry Pi may be downloaded free of charge from the download page, together with the SHA-256 fingerprint of each file.
For use in a school, a club, a public library, or for any distribution in quantity, write to the author through the forum: he is the one who rules on those cases.
What is not allowed
Redistributing modified, patched or reassembled binaries, or offering them under another name.
Attempting to obtain the source code, disassembling the software, or removing its copyright notices.
Selling the software, charging for it, or including it in a paid product without permission.
Claiming a warranty of the results: the software is provided without any warranty, including for the precision of its calculations (see the Sources of calculations and data page).
Astronomical data
The catalogues displayed by WinStars are research data published by their authors, who keep their own terms of use and ask for citation. The main ones:
Gaia EDR3 / DR3: data of the European Space Agency, open and free, citing the mission papers. See Sources of calculations and data.
OpenNGC, EDD, PGC: public astronomical catalogues.
Minor Planet Center: orbits of small bodies, under the MPC citation conditions.
DSS: photographic surveys distributed by the Space Telescope Science Institute.
NASA Exoplanet Archive: catalogue of confirmed exoplanets.
CelesTrak / Space-Track: orbital elements of satellites.
The complete list of references is on the Sources of calculations and data page.
Documentation and screenshots
This manual, the help pages and the screenshots are published on the official website and remain the property of their authors. Any reproduction, even partial, must state its origin and the source website. The pages are translated into French, English, Spanish and Russian: in case of divergence, the French version prevails.
The footer of the documentation pages refers to the graphic theme used to display them (sphinx_rtd_theme theme). The licence of that theme applies neither to the WinStars software, nor to the astronomical data, nor to the texts of this manual.
Reporting a problem
The Send a bug report page explains how to send the log file. The bugtracker and the forum are open for functional problems.
Revision history
The successive modifications of the software are published on the revision history page.