License terms for Patchcord

Last updated: 2 October 2026 · Zielke Studio, Marburg, Germany · In case of doubt, the German version prevails.

In short

Patchcord is free, for personal and professional use.
A Pro license covers one person on all of their own Macs, forever.
All updates for Patchcord 1.x are included.
Please don’t share or publish your license key.
The purchase is handled by Stripe as the seller; receipt, payment and withdrawal are governed there.

1. Scope

These terms govern the use of the Patchcord software, including the “Patchcord Mic” and “Patchcord Camera” drivers (together “Patchcord”), in the free version and as Patchcord Pro. The provider is Zielke Studio, Marburg, Germany (details in the imprint at zielke.studio).

Patchcord Pro is sold through Stripe (Stripe Managed Payments). Stripe is the seller and your contractual partner for the purchase, payment, receipt, statutory warranty arising from the purchase and withdrawal; Stripe’s terms shown at checkout apply to these. These license terms govern how you may use the software.

2. Free use and trial

You may use Patchcord free of charge and without time limit, for personal and professional purposes. After installing, you can try the Pro features for free for 7 days. After that they require a Pro license; all other features and your settings remain.

3. Patchcord Pro

With your purchase you receive a simple, non-transferable, perpetual right to use the Pro features. The license covers one natural person on all Macs that this person uses themselves, personally and professionally. If several people in a company or organization use Patchcord Pro, each person needs their own license.

4. Updates

The license includes all updates of major version 1 (1.x). A later new major version may be paid; your 1.x license is not affected. There is no entitlement to specific future features.

5. License key

Your license key is personal. You may not publish it, pass it on or sell it. If a key is demonstrably distributed publicly, we may block it in future versions; if that happens, please get in touch and we will find a solution.

6. What is not allowed

circumventing the license check or distributing tools to do so,
reselling Patchcord or modified versions, or distributing them as your own product,
decompiling or reverse engineering Patchcord, except where permitted by law.

7. Plugins and third-party software

Audio Unit plugins such as Antinode Clear are products of other manufacturers and subject to their licenses. Patchcord contains open-source components whose licenses are listed below and remain unaffected.

8. Liability

We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, and under the German Product Liability Act. For slightly negligent breach of an essential obligation that makes proper use possible in the first place and on which you may rely, liability is limited to the foreseeable, typical damage. Otherwise, liability for slight negligence is excluded. For free use, we are only liable for intent and gross negligence.

Patchcord works deep inside the audio system. Before important calls, please check that your audio and video come through as intended.

9. Data

The license check runs offline on your Mac; Patchcord sends no data for it. To issue and send your license key we store your name, email address and purchase date. Patchcord checks our server daily for updates; as with any web request, the IP address and app version are transmitted and only evaluated anonymously as statistics. Payment data is processed exclusively by Stripe.

10. Final provisions

German law applies. If you are a consumer, the mandatory consumer protection provisions of the country you live in remain unaffected. Should any provision be invalid, the remaining provisions stay in effect.

Questions? lizenz@zielke.studio

Open-source licenses

Sparkle (updates in the app), MIT License:

Copyright (c) 2006-2013 Andy Matuschak.
Copyright (c) 2009-2013 Elgato Systems GmbH.
Copyright (c) 2011-2014 Kornel Lesiński.
Copyright (c) 2015-2017 Mayur Pawashe.
Copyright (c) 2014 C.W. Betts.
Copyright (c) 2014 Petroules Corporation.
Copyright (c) 2014 Big Nerd Ranch.
All rights reserved.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of
the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE 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 OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

=================
EXTERNAL LICENSES
=================

bspatch.c and bsdiff.c, from bsdiff 4.3 <http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/>:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted providing that the following conditions
are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY
DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT,
STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING
IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

sais.c and sais.h, from sais-lite (2010/08/07) <https://sites.google.com/site/yuta256/sais>:

The sais-lite copyright is as follows:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE 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 OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Portable C implementation of Ed25519, from https://github.com/orlp/ed25519

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the
authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial
applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the
original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product
documentation would be appreciated but is not required.

2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as
being the original software.

3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.

SUSignatureVerifier.m:

Kanit and Instrument Serif (fonts of this website), SIL Open Font License 1.1: license text.