Dear Stefan, thank you bringing up this topic. Thank you Fabian for
answering the questions raised.
The main question for me is still not asked and answered. Despite all
communication done already from the start of the announcement in this
dual license issue. To start with a side issue, where does OpenERP SA
hide there community manager(s)? At least I had expect a main role for
them in communicating with us. It seems that this topic is now so hot
and controversial that they are not taken the lead anymore and the CEO
himself is coming to the front line to explain. At least for me all
communication makes it not more clear at all.
What me bothers most in the route OpenERP SA is taking, with this dual
licensing and the rumor it generates in the community (fully
understandable), is that it seems that OpenERP SA is looking only to
it's own position and does forget the position of it's
community/contributors/partners.
Developing a ERP system is one thing, implementing an ERP system is a
total different thing.
The eco-system arround the product OpenERP is build with implementing
and maintenance services mainly done by companies other then OpenERP SA.
From there the revenues will flow upwards via partner- and maintenance
contracts etc..
And now my main problem:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Such a service company needs a stable basis (read OpenERP product,
OpenERP SA, licenses, contracts) to build such a business on. There
should be a well defined stable route, in development, in legal
documents like contracts and licenses whereas these companies can trust
on to develop there own long term business strategy.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Right now starting from the development of version 6 (or is it the
capital fund injection?) these companies are overwhelmed with
fundamental changes is licenses and contracts. Our businesses will be
affected with these changes and we are forced to deal with this if we
want to secure our investments done.
My related problem is that there was no open discussion with these
companies so important in this eco-system to discus and bring up
together a solution
where democratic decision making is done for the route to go resulting
in that our investments are secured too.
The risk now is that these companies (some more or less) will
re-investigate if OpenERP is still trust-full and stable enough to build
there own business on. What will be the next change we have to deal
with? Will it finally break my own business? Do I have (enough) time to
change my business strategy? What to do with my current customer contracts?
Despite the potential of the product the answer could be that I don't
trust this eco-system anymore to build my whole business on.
In that case there are other open-source ERP's, yes with different
licenses and different contracts but business-wise a more stable
eco-system where I can better relay on to build your own business on. I
have to make a living too and are responsible for eventually in-house
employees as well.
With other words, talk, listen and interact with your community to
overcome problems faced when going forward before acting in changes that
will affect those companies. Right now OpenERP SA is starting to
breaking down it's eco-system and if that's going to continue OpenERP SA
will reach the opposite on the long term as it is trying to accomplish
right now.
Side-note: It is not necessary to sell a product to every customer. If a
customer can't deal with open-source AGPL licence he is free to choose a
other product/solution. Mostly it is better to stick to your own
principles (read AGPL) the trying to make everyone happy (read
AGPL+provate use). The latter can sometimes be more destructive then
anticipated on forehand!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Met vriendelijke groet,
*Veritos - Open Source Business Solutions
Jan Verlaan CPIM*
Op 26-07-11 20:15, Fabien Pinckaers schreef:
Hello Stefan,
Thank you for your feedback.
thank you for your passionate reaction. I believe that you share the same
passion for Open Source software and the OpenERP products in particular as we
do.
Yes, and I take this opportunity to also thank you for the great contrib you
did too.
It is vital for us to contribute to the OpenERP framework and the core modules,
so we would always prefer the option of copyright assignment in a contributor
agreement. You raise a number of valid issues with regards to protecting the
OpenERP products against copyright violations and other problems which argue in
favour of such copyright assignment. I do not think that anyone can argue
against them, and it is for such reasons that projects like Plone and KDE may
ask for copyright assignment in a contributor agreement.
Actually, my preferred solution is the public domain for small contributions to
the framework or the official modules.
I think it's very boring to ask people to sign a document and send us by fax/mail
just because they contributed a few lines of code -> doing contracts with
community members is not the way I see a good collaboration (this was the reason
why we did not made it before: we supposed that if a contributor did not put a
copyright in his code, merge proposal or patch, it is considered public domain)
But I understand some may prefer a contributor agreement. If some wants a
contributor agreement, I propose to use the one of the FSFE. Does anybody have
any bad feedback about this contributor agreement ?
So, my question is: is it ok for you to put contributions to the framework or
official addons in the public domain or you prefer a contributor agreement ?
(of course, your own modules should be under your own copyright)
However, the problem is that assigning copyrights to a commercial entity does
not always help when the issues that you mention occur. We know you personally
to be a great proponent of Open Source but your successor or your creditors may
not. OpenERP SA may be sold to a different party, or take up a very different
attitude for some other reason. When that happens, and OpenERP SA has all the
copyrights, we will never be able to update the license to protect the OpenERP
products or enforce the licenses in court.
OpenERP SA will not be sold to third parties, I own a significant part of the
shares to ensure that. The biggest risk for OpenERP SA is not to be sold but to
fail building a profitable business model allowing to sustain the fast
evolution of the OpenERP product. In that case OpenERP may finish like GNUe,
adempiere, ... in a few years. That would be the worst scenario in my opinion.
But even if it is (suppose I die in an accident), it does not change the fact
that OpenERP is currently under AGPLv3. Nobody can change this.
If we follow best practices in open source, then we set up a non-profit
membership organisation as in the case of Plone and KDE, for contributors to
assign their copyrights to. The FSFE/KDE agreement [1] would be perfect for
that.
By doing that, you may have the invert effect than what you expect:
* the more people are involved in a decision, the less chances you have to make
the evolution -> if 50% of the contributors have to agree to change from
AGPLv3 to a potential AGPLv4, you have a risk that you can never upgrade. I would
never take this risks for OpenERP
* I don't imaging starting a discussion to define the status of such an
organisation. It would be a long debate and we all have more important things
to do than legal researches, discussion on status, official meetings and votes,
...
* just imagine the questions you have to cover in the status:
- who can join ? --> those that commit more than 1% of the lines of
code (then there would be only OpenERP) ? what do you do if a lot of devs from
microsoft that contribute and join the association ?
- how do you take take desisions ? 80% of votes according to the
importance of the contributor based on the lines of code --> then only OpenERP
sa can take the decisions.
- who will pay the costs of the organization ? what will be the budget and
forecasted costs ? how can the association enforce the protection of the license
in a court ? --> this can quickly costs more than 100k$
- what's the responsibilities of the organization ? it is logic that
the one who get the copyright ensure the evolution of his code.
- if the association decide to remove the "private use" clause of
OpenERP Enterprise, who will pay my developers that are partly financed by this ? If
nobody, who will ensure OpenERP will grow quickly in the future.
As a summary, we clearly all have more important things to do than this. I
don't want OpenERP community to enter in such debates, it's a waste of time.
What do you think about putting all small contributions to official modules and
framework in the public domain ? this is the best solution as it does not
require a copyright assignment (to OpenERP SA or to an association).
This solution is also very fair as a contributor can apply a special licence
for his own code (that he may use in others softwares) and we can put his code
in the core without having to ask a contributor agreement signature. We protect
both the unity of OpenERP and the personnal contrib of each one.
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