openerp-community team mailing list archive

[Raphael Valyi <rvalyi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello community,

I'm unfortunately very busy right now, so here at Akretion we need to
discuss internally about that and give our position and suggestions.
Already I can tell that I'm very happy to see Fabien making such a proposal
to add some extra SaaS protective clause in license exception. Indeed, this
is the very issue that is refraining us from telling, "if you think your new
license is legal (I'm not sure), then we sign you an agreement/disclaimer).

About the legality of the new license, many things have been told already. I
can resume the issues as:
1) do copyright owners all agree and who are them exactly?
That might largely be fixed if a fair mention is added in the license. If
say only 2% of copyright holder still disagree, rewrite might then be an
option. We still encourage to be very rigorous on that special license
mention. As I said, my biggest fear today is the possibility of a
locked/enhanced SaaS version by OpenERP SA which we would find unacceptable
to be built on the top of all our contributions.

2) private modules distributed via the network are incompatible with the
strict AGPL license of many community modules and localization.
This is an issue and depending on how clear or not this is, this can be even
be seen as an incentive to violate the AGPL license. Nothing impossible o
fix, but AGPL will certainly need to be properly defended, even more than
it's because of OpenERP SA that those modules are licensed AGPL.


There is however a 3) issue I see and never wrote about (except a quick
tweet):
On one hand, OpenERP SA tells us that there license is still protecting us
against offensive locked SaaS implementations. When we are speaking about
third party SaaS, it makes some sense as OpenERP SA will control the general
sale conditions of the license and may very well refuse to sell the
exception to such an offensive SaaS (they told us they would force to buy
one license per database, making those SaaS non competitive), well,
obviously they will decide and avoid competition to themselves, fine.

On the other hand, OpenERP SA promise you can use private modules with your
Enterprise exception license.

Then how long exactly can you use your "private modules"?

Two options:
1) you buy a license exception once an can USE IT FOREVER. Then how does it
protect from the offensive locked SaaS? Couldn't I buy one license for some
kind of inoffensive business and slowly change it to an offensive locked
SaaS? As I explained I'm personally very attached to protect against private
SaaS (the AGPL), else some investor will just rip all our work and screw us
all, be them behind OpenERP SA or running on their own. And BTW, this is
certainly an issue I have with Tryton licensing today.

2) you can use your module AS LONG AS YOU PAY A LICENSE EXCEPTION to OpenERP
SA.
Then I raise the quesion: how open source compatible is that you have your
'private' trade secret implementations chained to an editor and their future
pricing policy. They can even promise you the price will stay the same, if
your country get the economic fate as they Grece, it's exactly the same as
OpenERP doubling their prices in the future; in either case you'll be forced
to pay much more than what you planned or you couldn't pay at all.

Is such a license really compatible with GPL and AGPL as OpenERP SA tells
us?
Did you already think about that case?
What is OpenERP SA and partner position about this?



OK. But again, I would like to thank Fabien for making that step about
putting a more explicit protection against locked SaaS right in the license
exception. I strongly encourage people to think about the exact terms. I
will also analyse Stefan proposal that I find very constructive a first
sight.

Sorry, but I will also thank Sharoon for his words. Sharoon has long been an
excellent OpenERP contributor before he left for Tryton, he certainly did it
for reasons and he made many points about things that are not right today in
OpenERP.

My reaction for Fabien is:
Fabien we are certainly many here to acknowledge the huge work of OpenERP SA
and you behind OpenERP. For this most of us if not all will never contest
that OpenERP should play a central role in OpenERP and get a huge part of
the pie. We are actually dedicated in helping for that.
As for Akretion, we followed you until there:
- we made around 12 full implementations in 2 years, 4 in virgin territories
and it was a challenge
- we sold you 3 and soon 4 OPW since the beginning of 2011 (being only 5
people on average)
- we have been training future OpenERP professionals in the CTP program
(that is potentially future competitors) and even giving you money back
doing that
- we published all our code according to the AGPL license
And many here did the same. So you can certainly not accuse us of not making
our part.

I understand that you or your investors want to get some legal guarantees
that OpenERP SA stay leading that ship.
Now, you should be EXTREMELY careful in adopting policies that will not
refrain OpenERP development.

I'm sorry, but I should say I share Sharoon concerns about OpenERP SA not
making its best to accept third party contributions. Yes there are many
experts around that tirelessly provide free work and could provide a lot
more if encouraged to do so by proper policies that could be aggregated into
OpenERP. Take accounting, it's quite clear that the best experts are in the
community and not behind OpenERP walls. Yes you finally hired a few good
developers, but there are still many developer resources too.
Instead if you don't get your devs be exchanging ideas and code on lists and
other communication channels, just like proprietary software the whole
development is costing a lot more, the quality is a lot less and at the end
of the road, you should pay it and adopt policies that are not what make the
essence of free software.

I would very much prefer instead a FAIR contributor agreement that gives
contributors acknowledgement and guarantees but still give some decision
margin to OpenERP SA (like you can upgrade to any newer version of the AGPL
license is very fair I think;  allowing private modules while protecting
against locked SaaS INCLUDING from OpenERP SA or affiliates is fair I
think). Once you get that social contract, then please free OpenERP from
that proprietary development style.
Else that's true, something like Tryton that by contrast doesn't have
that inertia will progress times faster and soon beat OpenERP on all fronts.
It would certainly not mean the end of OpenERP, nor OpenERP SA, not its
partners, but still, that would be big failure for those who followed the
OpenERP road.

You can tell us that with no marketing Tryton and no big money will never
achieve X. Well, Tryton on its side is locked SaaS compatible (GPL and I
think this is an issue for an ERP I think), so it can very well attract
investors too, even more than an AGPL OpenERP. And don't come to cry at us
about that. I believe at the Axelor times, you had been very happy OpenERP
was AGPL instead...

Yes, there are a few hypocrite people behind Tryton and I know some (they
are not Sharoon nor Nan at least). Actually, the only 1 of our 12 customers
that asked us not to disclose some code (not necessarily illegal if no
network exposure, still borderline in their case) is one of those that
migrated to Tryton and now bash OpenERP at every occasion you give, in the
name of free software.
Those guys are not telling you all the truth on Twitter and they have a lot
of $$$ to inject in Tryton and they are not alone and I think they already
started in a way or another.

So I mean, Tryton is here and growing. It's really up to OpenERP to keep in
the lead by taking appropriate contributions and licensing policies. Tryton
may not have the functional scope of OpenERP nor its community, it has a
better core quality and things can move fast if the few sensible actors move
of camp, if money is injected and if a Tryton Foundation is created. One
Openlabs or one Nantic behind Tryton is not only the loss of 1/10 of the
real community power behind OpenERP (which isn't 300+ partners sorry), it
also kind of double the Tryton power every time.


Okay. For now, let's try to focus on an agreement and licensing exception
mention as it is certainly a step in the right direction. We will give our
analyse and proposal soon.


-- 
Raphaël Valyi
Founder and consultant
+55 21 3010 9965
www.akretion.com




On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Stefan Rijnhart <stefan@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Fabien,
>
> thank you again for your effort to display your commitment to free and open
> source software, especially in the following line:
>
>
>  we can put a clause on the contributor agreement: if one day, something
>> developed by openerp is not open source (under one of the gnu licenses) the
>> copyright goes back to the community. I do not know the legal impact of such
>> a thing but it's clearly in phase with what we want to do with OpenERP.
>>
>>
> There is already such a section in the FLA to this purpose [1], which
> states
>
> KDE e.V. shall only exercise the granted rights and licences in accordance
> with the principles
> of Free Software as allowed under the text of the charter of KDE e.V.,
> version of September
> 26, 2006. [...] In the event KDE e.V. violates the principles of Free
> Software, all granted rights and licences
> shall automatically return to the Beneficiary and the licences granted
> hereunder shall be terminated
> and expire.
>
> Having a contributor agreement with such a clause would sufficiently
> warrant your commitment to open source for us to sign over the copyright on
> our contributions to the framework and official modules to OpenERP SA.
>
> This does not mean that we now waive the idea of a membership foundation to
> promote and protect the OpenERP products. Setting it up means that the
> issues which you mention need to be dealt with (legal status, membership
> terms, etc.), but such a foundation would be another instrument to establish
> sustainable collaboration in the OpenERP ecosystem. We will leave it as a
> wishlist item for now.
>
> To the people who vented a lack of trust in OpenERP SA in this thread: It
> would be constructive if you could see a contributor agreement as a way for
> OpenERP SA to commit themselves to open source and try to regain your trust.
> Would such an agreement need to state additional terms and conditions to
> satisfy your concerns?
>
>
> On behalf of Therp,
> Stefan Rijnhart
>
> [1] http://ev.kde.org/resources/**FLA-generic.pdf<http://ev.kde.org/resources/FLA-generic.pdf>,
> section 3 paragraph 3.
>
>
> --
> Therp - Maatwerk in open ontwikkeling
>
> Stefan Rijnhart - Ontwerp en implementatie
>
> mail: stefan@xxxxxxxx
> tel: +31 (0) 614478606
> http://therp.nl
> https://twitter.com/therp_**stefan <https://twitter.com/therp_stefan>
>
>
>
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