As many of us, I propose to my customers a modified version of SugarCRM and/or SuiteCRM. I play by the rules: all my customers are getting the source code and (rarely, I admit, but it did happen more than once), I push back patches mainstream.
So far so good. Now, could you, please, confirm the below:
With the switch to AGPL, my customers need to propose their users the complete source code, together with any vertical business changes I made. This means all their employers and partners using Suite + my modifications must have the access to the code.
Is above true? If yes, it seriously impacts my business. Some of my customers will never give up the code for, let’s say, custom pricing rules. And in this case, they will have to to all their employees and partners.
I was unable to find any meaningful response to that in google, sugar forums and this forum. Could you please help?
There sure is a lot of legal waffle surrounding “free” software these days.
Have a look here and you would conclude that you may modify the software and are not forced to distribute your modified source provided that the application is used on a private/corporate network or intranet. While not specifically covered, a reasonable legal argument could be made that this clause would extend to private internet use as well. ie: a web based application that is only used by employees of a specific company using the internet as a distributed intranet. Even so, after reading the license from top to bottom, I could not make that conclusion. It is so full of legal mumbo jumbo that it requires a list of pretend questions just to explain it.
What the licence is trying to kill off is the case where a supplier of software as a service makes modifications or extensions to open source software, charges for the use of the modified software via the internet and does not release the source of the changes back to the community.
Careful, personal opinion follows:
[spoiler]Can’t see the problem really. All users of (say) SuiteCRM are making money in business using the software and they are not compelled to contribute back to the community. Why is it then so bad to extend software and make money from the “better” version that we need to create legal documents to prevent it?[/spoiler]
You need to spend time understanding open source licensing!!
In outline: If you make modifications for a customer, those modifications are private to that customer and there is no requirement to share.
If you make modifications to SugarCRM and distribute these generally either as a module or a software as a service, then the modifications become open source… distribution is the key word.
The Aferro GPL was engineered to prevent people leeching on open source … to help prevent them from building proprietary extensions to open source projects, profiting from the extensions as proprietary software and not sharing the code … standing on the shoulders of giants.
Apologies for late resurrection of the thread - but trying to get my head around the licensing.
My clarification question is basically around the definition:-
In outline: If you make modifications for a customer, those modifications are private to that customer and there is no requirement to share.
How does this cover when development is done for a customer - who then subsequently “sells” on those developments - i.e. a third-party developing for a commercial business??
If you make modifications to SugarCRM and distribute these generally either as a module or a software as a service, then the modifications become open source… distribution is the key word.
How does this cover when modules are developed, distributed and “sold” as an additional module?? As many add-ons or modules are marketed for sale on Internet - indeed on this site - how is the definition of module/add-on defined - i.e. when is it deemed to be modification and when is is add-on/replacement?? Does this only cover when you use the whole SuiteCRM package??
I genuinely do not understand when the development is deemed to be captured within the open source component - and thence must be “shared” - and when it is deemed outside and can be “sold”.
Could you please expand the original answer to clarify.