openerp-community team mailing list archive

[Raphael Valyi <rvalyi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Fabien,

On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 10:16 AM, Fabien Pinckaers <fp@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> > Hello Fabien,
> > that's cool to hear you may change your mind a few things you announced.
> > But tell us, that would of course never apply to the established
> > licenses under which all the contributions were made of course?
> > Even in case of emergency plan right? We have your word right?
>
> Copy/paste from one of my latest blog:
>
>   We removed the words "Open" and "ERP" from our name. But Odoo is and
>   always will be fully open source. Our open source business model is
>   unchanged. Our commitment to an open software and community remains.
>   And it's the same for ERP; Odoo's key priorities are still management
>   applications like accounting, project management, crm, inventory, etc.
>
>
> You guys are bothering me. After so many years, you still see the devil
> in every move...
>
> There are only a very few companies in the world like us, with a so
> strong open source commitment.


Open source is a buzzword used by many companies around to deserve various
kind of purposes.

My question was not about "open source" but about the exact license used,
that is AGPL.

That is a "copyleft" business even in the context of a SaaS model (which of
course is becoming predominant),
by opposition to an "open core" model that would be allowed by different
licenses, even the GPL
in a SaaS prospective (the loophole fixed by the AGPL as you very well
since you made the move
from GPL to AGPL during 2008).

Now why am I asking that? Well it happens that by 2011, regardless of the
contributions under AGPL,
OpenERP SA decided to unilaterally add a "pivate use" clause to the AGPL
license that you started  to use
just like double license i your Enterprise package. And you Fabien said
that eventually you would
just rewrite the contributions f some contribute would not agree with that
re-licensing.

One could always interpret contributions moving out of a project a bit
equivalent to anticipated rewrite.

So, I think I do have some legitimate reasons to ask you whether or not you
are committed to AGPL
or if you have some possible hidden agenda regarding this that eventually
may impact the business
of people making businesses depending today on OpenERP/Odoo.

You know, one could always imagine that the friendly community is all
encouraged to make these free contributions
as AGPL to the OpenERP/Odoo ecosystem and that in the meantime, tomorrow,
if some business
model fails say to sell the way it is planning to sell today, you would
eventually reconsider the AGPL
commitment and let financial investment take over the open source
investment.
Of course monetizing a public community asset (AGPL ecosystem) into a
private differentiated asset
(say non AGPL SaaS) is always a way to generate a some cash, just like when
a public company is
privatized.

All this is investment, whether it's money or whether it is code open
source code. And the "community"
certainly deserves the same commitment with its contracts (the AGPL
license) than your financial
investors get with their investment contracts. After all, investment of
OpenERP/Odoo "community"
weights quite a bit more than 6 millions euros...

So it sounds fair to ask for commitment to AGPL before community contribute
you more free code to your ecoystem, no?

So am just asking about that commitment and I think this is legitimate from
somebody or community who
participated heavily on the ecosystem investment of OpenERP/Odoo.
Sorry if you found it offensive, but my question about commitment to AGPL
was serious in fact.


Regards.

-- 
Raphaël Valyi
Founder and consultant
http://twitter.com/rvalyi <http://twitter.com/#!/rvalyi>
+55 21 3942-2434
www.akretion.com