Licensing Query For Adempiere

[rvergara]

Gentlemen,

I have sent a note to the FSF as follows:

"Dear sir,

I am writing this note on behalf of the Adampiere project council.

In a nutshell Adampiere has been created from the Compiere community that has expressed disatissfaction with the direction that the project has been taking and that we considered has moved it away from the original objectives of the project. You will find a history of the discussions we sustained as part of the creation of the Adampiere project here:

http://red1.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=931

We intend to use the latest source delivered to the Compiere community back in April, 2006 in order to create a stable, enhanced product that lives upto the standards and philosophy of the open source world. This source is distributed with an OSI certified license attached in this note for your perusal.

Your advise would be very much appreciated to answer the following questions:

1. Does the larger work to be developed by the community have to be released using the CPL 1.1 license (derivative of the MPL)? are there any other open source options that we can use (of course gpl would be our preference)?
2. Section III of the amendments specify that we can not remove the logo unless approved by Compiere Inc. if this is requested and denied we would have to display the logo as it is today, would the distribution of the enhanced sourced create a liability to us (given that our version of the software will display the logo but the product is essentially different) ?
3. Section 6.3 of the license seems to indicate that we may create a version of the license where the word Compiere is replaced, however the license says this may only be done to code is not already covered. Would this mean that we would require 2 licenses, CPL for the original covered code and the new license covering the modifications?
4. regarding section IV of the ammendments, there is third party software being distributed with Compiere and that has been licensed under terms, that we do not have access, to Compiere Inc. Can we distribute the third party software as part of the enhanced product or this create a legal liability to us?

If you can not or do not want to answer these questions, can you please point us in a direction of somebody that can help us on a pro bono basis?

Your help on addresing this request is very much appreciated.

Regards

Ramiro Vergara
Adempiere Project Council memeber"


I have received an automatic response as follows:

"This message has been automatically generated in response to the a
licensing question you sent to the Free Software Foundation, with subject:
"Request on Behalf of the Adampiere Project".

There is no need to reply to this message right now. Your request has
been assigned an ID of [gnu.org #305796].

Please include the string:
[gnu.org #305796]
in the subject line of all future correspondence about this issue. To do
so, you may reply to this message."


I will keep you posted on any developments

Ramiro

[red1]

Thanks Ramiro, you are very efficient and precise.

Hopefully news will travel at cyber speeds and we get the right judgement of historical importance soon.

[croo]

Excellent idea Ramiro.

Can you just confirm something for me ... Is the section III you mentioned in your 253b?
Because, as I said in the debate in the open forum, while that clause was in the 253a version I downloaded the license in the 253b version does NOT have the "Ammendments" section at the top!?

colin

[rvergara]

Can you just confirm something for me ... Is the section III you mentioned in your 253b?
Because, as I said in the debate in the open forum, while that clause was in the 253a version I downloaded the license in the 253b version does NOT have the "Ammendments" section at the top!?

colin

Hi Colin,

I was on the road when I wrote this request so I did not have access to a copy of 2.5.3b. I asked Victor to send it to me and Section III is included in the license he sent me.

Regards

Ramiro

[croo]

Section III is included in the license he sent me.

Very interesting that! I had a lot a test data created on 253a and didn't have access to the migration tools so when 253b arrived I just downloaded the source fom CSV for reference but never syncronised again... I wonder was it changed?

Did you read that post fom Michael Judd ( http://red1.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=952 )?
He says

I lobbied the OSI about Compiere's illegal use of the OSI logo on their website - as they did not have an approved open source license. This pressure resulted in Compiere changing its license to be in line with MPL and to remove the tie in on the logo's etc.

Nice one Michael!
That would seem to indicated that the license in my 253b is no mistake! in which case I think we should have no problems with forking and simply removing the logo & name! ... but no harm in seeing what FSF have to say

colin

[rvergara]

It is better to have an opinion from an IP & Licencing expert, so I will pursue the FSF path anyway.

Regards

Ramiro

[croo]

I will pursue the FSF path anyway

Of course Ramiro, it's important to be absolutely sure.
I was just pointing out that from what Micahel said, the outcome was looking like it would be positive!

colin

[anticareer]

Regarding license for Adempiere, it seems as though the consensus is to go with GPL.

I think it is important to point out that in the business community the GPL is often avoided out of fear that the company may expose themselves to an obligation to give away trade secrets if they customize the software.

This is not so much a concern with operating systems, databases, or application servers. But business applications are higher up the stack and more likely to be customized by the business consumer.

I would suggest consideration of an alternative approach such as that taken by Open for Business. OFBiz was originally released under the MIT license and is now under the Apache 2.0 license.

Regardless of your opinion on OS licenses, the one chosen WILL influence adoption. It is difficult during the sales process to explain the technical details to a customer on how they can perform customizations that are not subject to the terms of the license. That is, if you even get to the sales process. The customer may rule it out immediately based on the license.

All of us in the business of implementing open source solutions make a living by charging for the services we provide, not the software itself. And we need the flexibility to honor our customers' wishes.

[rvergara]

Regarding license for Adempiere, it seems as though the consensus is to go with GPL.

anti,
Of course we prefer GPL, however we are entering into this project with some limitation on our degrees of freedom in that respect. Given that we will (most probably) use version 2.5.3b for the fork, we are limited to use the same license that version uses, that is CPL 1.1 which is a derivative of MPL.

Since IANAL (see groklaw for reference), I opted for raising this question to the Free Software Foundation which are subject matter experts on this.

Regards

Ramiro

[globalqss]

Personally I'm closer to MPL than GPL. But one thing I want to clarify about GPL.

With GPL end users doesn't need to publish their improvements, only if they're going to "sell" the application. What normally is not the case for end users, but normally it IS the case for partners.

So, I think MPL is not more friendly than GPL for end-users, but is more friendly for partners wanting to construct a competitive advantage over another partners, but I think this is not the spirit of open source, neither from this project.

Regards,

Carlos Ruiz

[StevenK]

The advantage of MPL is that you can get an open source project, and then add proprietary code to it and make it a proprietary application. This comes very handy when you add features not widely sought-after, or when you build upon the MPL version. Of course, then you are on your own.

On the other hand, if you have a GPL software, then you have to publish your code. This has its negative side when others just draw on your work.

It is a classic case in game theory. No-one has advantage over the other with the GPL (nobody loose), but only one assuredly wins and others loose with the MPL. The initial response is to go with MPL, to protect your own. The catch is that with the GPL you can take advantage of the work of others, as well. And you get known for the quality of your work. It worked fine for the most succesfull open source projects, but Linus Torvalds will not become a millionaire.

I feel somewhat insecure, but I vote for GPL.

Regards,
StevenK

[vpj-cd]

Hi all!

I think that we must begin with MPL , but we should go to GPL, We as a solution provider must offer services and support , do not sale software

So, for me is fine GPL.

I am agree with

anticareer wrote:

All of us in the business of implementing open source solutions make a living by charging for the services we provide, not the software itself. And we need the flexibility to honor our customers' wishes.

I suggest move this topic to :

https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.p ... id=3911216

Regards
Victor[/quote]