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SugarCRM: sleeping with shared source
Feb. 17, 2006

Microsoft has long had a sort-of, kind-of, quasi-open-source license for quite some time. Until SugarCRM Inc., an open-source CRM (customer relationship management) company, adopted the MS-CL (Microsoft Community License) this month, however, only Microsoft had used the license.

Before this, SugarCRM had used a variety of open-source licenses. These have included MPL (Mozilla Public License) and the GNU GPL (General Public License). The company has also used its own SugarCRM Public License Version 1.1.3. This is a variation on the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1, which has been modified to refer to SugarCRM.

It should be noted that neither the SugarCRM license nor the MS-CL are recognized as open-source licenses by the Open Source Initiative.

John Roberts, SugarCRM's CEO, told eWEEK's Peter Galli that, "We were really impressed by the Microsoft Shared Source Community License and like it a lot. We think it is a license that represents the ideals of our community and is one that they want to use, especially those customers who already run on the Windows platform."

It's not entirely clear why SugarCRM felt that it needed to add the MS-CL to its license pool, since the MS-CL, like its own license, is based on the Mozilla license. It certainly can't help but puzzle independent open-source developers who are thinking about working with the SugarCRM code.

With over 50 recognized open-source licenses, which doesn't even count ones like the MS-CL, most people who care about licensing issues agree that there are too many licenses in use as it is.

The real reason why SugarCRM may have made this move is that Microsoft and SugarCRM also entered at the same time into a technical collaboration agreement. This deal is meant to improve SugarCRM's products' interoperability with Server 2003.

I strongly suspect that to get that deal, SugarCRM had to agree to use the MS-CL. In turn, Microsoft will get a little bit more Wall Street creditability for its shared source initiatives.

Will other companies follow SugarCRM into using MS-CL? I doubt it.

Galli has already asked some other companies if they'd move to the MS-CL, and the answer was a resounding no.

As for me, I can understand why SugarCRM made the deal. A lot, about 35 percent, of SugarCRM's customers are running it on Windows servers. If they can improve its performance on that platform, it will put them in a better competitive position with Salesforce.com, NetSuite Inc., and Epiphany Inc.

That said, I'd be cautious about working with Microsoft if I were SugarCRM. Microsoft has big plans for its own CRM suite, Dynamics CRM 3.0, and a confirmed habit of devouring its partners' technologies.


-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols


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