| "Business intelligence" software goes GPL |
Jun. 11, 2008
Pentaho Corp. has released its Linux-compatible, open source business intelligence (BI) software under a GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2) license. The license applies to the version 2 alpha release of the Pentaho BI Platform, as well as future versions, says the company.
The Pentaho BI Platform is the foundational infrastructure that underlies Pentaho's Open BI Suite. Previous versions had been released under the Mozilla Public License (MPL). The components that will now be licensed under GPL are the Platform engine core, engine services, engine security, repository, and UI foundation. The new licensing does not apply to modules such as Pentaho Analysis (Mondrian), Pentaho Data Integration (formerly Kettle), Pentaho Reporting (formerly JFreeReport), and Pentaho Data Mining (Weka), says Pentaho. However, in the future, Pentaho will require third-parties who want to contribute code to these components to release the code under GPL.
Pentaho BI Platform and Open BI Suite architecture
Pentaho bills its Open BI Suite as "the world's most popular open source BI suite." The software offers OLAP (on-line analytical processing) reporting, analysis, dashboards, data mining, and data integration features. Last Fall, Pentaho announced version 1.6, adding a BI metadata layer that lets IT develop intelligence road maps that business users can then use to build reports. It also added a thin-client AJAX-based reporting interface for streamlining the creation of ad hoc queries and reports without requiring input from IT.
Pentaho is providing a FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) exception to its GPL licenses, permitting Pentaho and other organizations that distribute the software under other specified Open Source Initiative (OSI) certified licenses to be exempt from some of the GPLv2 requirements. According to Pentaho, the FLOSS exception simplifies distribution.
In explaining its move to GPL, Pentaho cites a freshmeat.org statistic that more than 60 percent of open source projects tracked on the site are GPL-licensed. The company also noted the precedents set by other commercial open source vendors including MySQL, Alfresco, SugarCRM, as well as by Java and the Linux kernel, all of which are GPL-licensed projects.
More information on Pentaho's new licensing policy may be found here.
-- Eric Brown
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