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[Raphael Valyi <rvalyi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Axel,

this is probably correct: basically you cannot put AGPL v3 code
(OpenERP/Odoo) along with LGPL code without distributing the combined work
under the AGPL v3 (which is aggressively open source ad may not be inline
with the philosophy of that LGPL software).

"open source" sounds like just a simple word but there are very important
licensing details. For instance if you heard about the Oracle vs Google
case, both software were "open source", Java was GPL and Google developed
Dalvik under was Apache 2 because they didn't want to use GPL code OpenJDK
in their phones. You see were it went...

So yes, that may sounds boring but that's true. Not all open source
projects have the same vision: GPL and AGPL have a "copyleft" vision where
all derivative work should respect their initial license, that ensure for
instance that any user can get access to the source code. That's very nice
for the user, but sometimes that's not so nice for the editor business or
just even the software production, that's why other licenses, such as LGPL
instead allows making closed source software with their code to some extent.

The following graph may help you to get an idea of how it works and how
AGPL v3 seats as the most "militant" license here:
http://timreview.ca/ojs/february11/february11_daffara1.png

(and that's a choice that was made by OpenERP SA during 2009 as they moved
from GPL to AGPL deliberately)


Eventually you can take the AGPL code you extracted from OpenERP and wrap
is in a small web service that you would publish as AGPL code and call that
webservice from your LGPL code without "contaminating" it. It's the same
thing as browsing Odoo with Internet Explorer doesn't force Microsoft to
publish Internet Explorer closed source source code.

So AGPL is cool because it prevents some big company to come and make a
close version of Odoo and destroy the work of everybody from the community
or even OpenERP SA and the freedom of their users, or even in the
eventuality OpenERP SA would fail as a business and the founder wouldn't be
the ones deciding for the software anymore.
But while it's there to avoid such hijacking, you can still probably work
around your use case with a proper architecture if you really need some
Odoo features at some point in your project. In fact the hardest part of
AGPL is probably the fact that nobody sells modules, so the ecosystem is a
bit slower to develop, but the good part is that unlike something like
Magento apps store, it's there to stay.

Hope this helps.


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





On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 9:03 PM, Axel Mendoza Pupo <aekroft@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Some time ago I did some modules for another software based on code taken
> from OpenERP v7.0 and those modules was accepted to be part of the software
> core functionalities. The modules was developed to be able to send and
> receive emails via SMTP, POP3 and IMAP.
>
> My question are related to the license restriction that someone may have
> when the code from OpenERP/Odoo is used in a modified form to develop new
> features for another software.
> Odoo have the license:
> GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Version 3, 19 November 2007
> And the other software have LGPL license
>
> The software maintainer write me with concerns about the license
> interactions, and the news that the modules could not be integrated into
> the core without removing the OpenERP source code.
>
> Is there a way to allow someone to do this kind of develop based on
> OpenERP source code??
>
> We all develop OpenSource
>
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