openerp-community team mailing list archive

[Raphael Valyi <rvalyi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Lionel,

I agree with what you said but let me just correct one point because I
think these licensing things should really be taken seriously in general:

On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 5:58 AM, Lionel Sausin <ls@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Le 10/07/2014 02:03, Axel Mendoza Pupo a écrit :
>
>  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.
>>
> I'm not a lawer but:
> 1 - this is clearly "derivative work" of both the odoo module
> 2 - it's admitted that modules are themselves derivative works of the core.
> so AGPL applies to your code.
>
> Simply re-implement the AGPL part from scratch, i think it'd clear the
> problem and should be easy enough for a single module.
> Odoo SA themselves did that when they switched to AGPL, for small parts
> which conflicting contributors refused to relicence.
>

Not to my knowledge.

in 2009 they moved from GPL to AGPL and as you can see in that graph
http://timreview.ca/ojs/february11/february11_daffara1.png you can always
include GPL code (the contribs) in and AGPL software without asking
anyone's permission because the AGPL still preserve the user guaranties of
the GPL, it just adds an extra guarantee that the user will receive the
source code even if the software is distributed online like a SaaS without
binary distribution. If somebody did not agree with that at that time, they
didn't have their contrib violated by the AGPL branch and they could very
much start maintaining a pure GPL branch without the AGPL evolution and in
fact this is exactly what the Tryton fork did.

Now, during 2011, there have been an attempt (so 3 after 3 years of
contribs under strict AGPL when OpenERP SA was still peanuts and largely
supported by a community, without any contributor agreement of any sort
granting else than AGPL) to change the AGPL license adding some extra non
symmetric clause that would allow OpenERP SA to sell the right (in the
Enterprise contract) to a 3rd party to not submit its code to the AGPL
clause (the private modules thing). Well in that case, contributors were
not asked anything and it was said that if somebody disagree they would
rewrite (nice isn't it?) and no extensive rewrite was done either...

So personally I would love to see that kind of clause removed, specially as
it sets Odoo a bit aside from the OSI licenses and introduce a juridic risk
that someday in the long future, a big company like SAP or whatever could
use to attack the Odoo product or a company using it with these kind of
licensing terms. If you see what happened with Oracle and Google for things
that would be details compared to this, I wouldn't try that kind of thing
if someday Odoo achieve some of its potential.
That last 2011 move has been compiled in that blog post at the time
http://version2beta.com/articles/a-new-openerp-product-and-license/

I like very much the OpenERP / Odoo project, but no sorry I cannot stand
that kind of licensing approximations. We do open source because it's
something we like, not because we are stupid. Today OpenERP SA received yet
a new investment of 10 millions USD. What will happen if the business plan
fail, just like it already failed with Openbravo or Compiere
http://www.compieresource.com/2010/06/compiere-open-source-failed.html ?
Should all the people who invest in OpenERP / Odoo expose themselves to
licensing threats whenever the original founders may not be the ones that
would decide for the software anymore? For me open source is meant to be
safe, safer that proprietary software (even if they can be late o
schedule). So this is the very reason I don't like these approximations.

So I just wanted to clarify that point but aside from that I agree on all
you said.

Best regards.


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