ZeroC, Inc. is a company based in Palm Beach Gardens

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

Palm Beach Gardens is a city in Palm Beach County in the U.S. state of Florida. The city is in the center of a rapidly-developing area north of West Palm Beach in the northern part of the county and the South Florida metropolitan area. , the population was 48,452...

, Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

, U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, revolving around the development and licensing of the Internet Communications Engine

Internet Communications Engine

The Internet Communications Engine, or Ice, is an object-oriented middleware that provides object-oriented Remote Procedure Call, grid computing and Publish/subscribe functionality developed by ZeroC and dual-licensed under the GNU GPL and a proprietary license...

, or ICE, an object middleware system considered an alternative to CORBA

Çorba

Chorba , ciorbă , shurpa , shorpo , or sorpa is one of various kinds of soup or stew found in national cuisines across Middle East...

 and SOAP

SOAP

SOAP, originally defined as Simple Object Access Protocol, is a protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of Web Services in computer networks...

. It's also notable for employing several high-profile developers, including Michi Henning, a major contributor to CORBA and author of Advanced CORBA Programming with C++.

ZeroC licenses ICE under a dual-licensing scheme under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

and a commercial license.