openerp-community team mailing list archive

[Stefan Rijnhart <stefan@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

In the forum topic on dual license community modules [1] we, like others 
before us pointed out that OpenERP SA was not entitled to relicense code 
from outside contributors. We were contacted afterwards by Olivier Dony 
who asked us whether we would be willing to assign copyright of our 
contributions to OpenERP SA. As we believe that this is a topic that is 
relevant for the whole community, we choose to answer through the 
community mailing list.

Here at Therp we recognize the special role that OpenERP SA has played 
in the development of the OpenERP framework. Just as well, the open 
source model and the community around the OpenERP have also been major 
factors in the success of OpenERP. We want to grant OpenERP SA the 
ability to benefit from their efforts, as long as it does not harm the 
other factors.

OpenERP SA seems to have uncovered a new business model with its new 
offer to sell its products under a non-AGPL license to those companies 
who are afraid of losing a competitive advantage in their specific 
business area. This way the customer can escape the obligation that can 
arise under certain circumstances under the AGPL, to distribute any 
modules that were developed specifically for him. If we can support the 
development of the OpenERP products by licensing our contributions for 
this specific purpose, we are willing to do so, preferably by means of a 
contributor agreement that clearly describes the rights and obligations 
of both the contributor and OpenERP SA.

As for assigning copyright to OpenERP SA as requested by Olivier, or 
even giving a very broad license to OpenERP SA on our contributions, 
this would allow OpenERP SA to come up with all kinds of scenarios that 
we might not endorse. A single commercial entity can simply not be 
trusted to act in the best interest of an open source community. An 
elegant solution for this is to have a meritocratic membership 
foundation for OpenERP as there is for Plone to decide about these 
things and negotiate on behalf of the community. We would probably agree 
to assign joint ownership (rather than the actual copyrights) to such a 
foundation. If anything, this issue clearly demonstrates the need for 
the OpenERP community to organize themselves in such a way. As it is 
however, we will not assign copyright to OpenERP SA, and the contributor 
agreement should explicitely mention the limitations of the license that 
we grant to OpenERP SA on our code to reflect the purpose mentioned 
above (i.e. sell a non-AGPL license to individual customers so that they 
do not have to share their own customizations).

What we specifically do not want to allow, is for OpenERP SA to branch 
off a proprietary version that include bug fixes and functionality that 
lacks from the open source version or is added only after a deliberate 
delay. The contributor agreement should therefore include a commitment 
from OpenERP SA to always make the source code of the product and of any 
product derived from it available under the AGPL in a machine readable form.

Therp invites OpenERP SA to offer us a contributor agreement along these 
lines so that we can continue to support OpenERP properly for new and 
existing customers, contribute our bugfixes and patches and be a good 
citizen in the OpenERP community as well as supporting OpenERP SA in 
their business model.

On behalf of the Therp team,
Stefan Rijnhart

[1] http://www.openerp.com/forum/topic26369.html

--
Therp - Maatwerk in open ontwikkeling

Stefan Rijnhart - Ontwerp en implementatie

mail: stefan@xxxxxxxx
tel: +31 (0) 614478606
web: http://therp.nl