Lexis is licensed for reading, kindly.
A short, plain-English summary first. The legal text follows. Both apply; the legal text wins on a disagreement, but we have tried hard to make them agree.
The summary
- The app is paid software, but pay-what-you-want, including nothing.
- The .lex / .lexis file format is in the public domain (CC0). Use it anywhere.
- The app is available for research repositories or websites as a dedicated html reader by request under license.
- The website is open source under MIT — read the source, copy the source.
- If we ever stop maintaining Lexis, we have contractually committed to release the entire app under MIT within ninety days.
The MIT licence (as it appears in the source)
The MIT Licence
Copyright © 2024–2026 Lexis Press / Mira Aldon
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.The Press's promise
In addition to the licence above, we make one further promise — a kind of literary covenant.
Should Lexis Press cease operations, we will, within ninety days of the cessation, ensure that every reader keeps full access to their own library and annotations in the open .lex format — exportable, portable, and readable without us. The library format and your annotations are already open and yours; this commitment ensures your reading outlives us. The lamp stays on.
Trademarks
"Lexis Reader," the "L" book-spine mark, and "Notes from the Margin" are trademarks of Lexis Press. You may use them to refer to us — please do — but please don't use them on a competing product. We reserve the right to politely ask you to stop, and you should expect us to.
Third-party software
Lexis stands on excellent shoulders. The full attribution list lives in About › Acknowledgements inside the app, and includes (among others): Lora (Cyreal, OFL), IBM Plex (IBM, OFL), poppler (GPL), tantivy (MIT), and icu (Unicode). Thank you to everyone whose work we built on.
Continue: ‹ Privacy · .lex specification ›