Can I use Unity 5 Personal for free experiment?

A while ago, I was asked to build an application in Unity 4 (free) which was used to run psychology experiments at a University. Basically participants were tested for their spacial awareness abilities, to see how said abilities degrade with age.

I have now been asked to update the experiment and am wondering if I can use Unity 5 Personal. I am being paid for the work but it is less (drastically less!) than the $100K threshold for "Professional" obviously. I couldn't tell you what the University itself makes a year, but they will make no money from the application, and shell out less than £1K to me to write it.

So, am I allowed to use Unity 5 Personal? or do I stick with Unity 4 (or Unreal)?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Edit: "Free" is misleading in the thread title, sorry, was tripping over my words .

 

I'm not a lawyer but in general it depends on how you are working for the university. If you are a full-time university employee, and you're working on this project on their computers in their offices, then most likely they are the ones who should own the software license, and they'd need to buy a Pro license since they make over $100,000. If you are a student or a contractor, and they're just paying you for this particular job, and you're using your own computer and working at home, then you are the one who should own the license and you wouldn't need to buy Pro since you'd be making under $100,000.

 

What makeshiftwings said, basically. It depends on the income of the entity you are using the license for. Since universities usually have a larger turnover than 100.000$ they don't qualify for the free license despite usually still not having much budget to work with - at least in Germany. If you are doing personal contract work the it depends on how much you earn.

But the only unsatisfying answer to such questions is always: In doubt ask Unity or a lawyer.

 

Thanks for the info, I'll keep the project in Unity 4 for now.

 

The $100,000 restriction is for Unity 4 too, I would suggest you ask the question providing all info, are you contracted as an external company or contractor to the university? If so does you or the company make over $100,000 in a year, if so you should license Unity and should have in the first place.

 

Thanks, I'll email Unity about it.

I make the program, and earn less than $100K in a year. I'm developing as just me, not as an employee of a company.
I supply the built output, which anyone can use? (otherwise you'd have to buy the engine to play games made in Unity Free if you earned too much, I assume).
If the client company wants to have the project files from me and make their own changes, they'll need an appropriately licensed version of Unity.

Does all that sound right?
I'll email Unity and check anyway.

 

If the University is doing the application development, please see http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/03/05/were-announcing-a-new-secondary-education-program/

And the University should contact Unity through http://unity3d.com/contact/get-in-touch?type=education-secondary or just education (see drop down list).

If you're contracted for work and still make <100k income then you probably can still use personal, regardless if the client is a University. This is because the client is receiving a binary, and not developing in Unity.

The conditions only apply to developers, not end users.

Yes

 

Thank you for the info.

 

Sounds right to me, email them anyway, they are good at replying, but I think you are okay to use either 4 or 5 free based on what you've said.

 

You can also check the university student contract if you are a student. Some schools have it in their student contract that anything you do on campus is owned by the school. I wonder if that policy will come back to bite them some day.