| Alfresco moves from Mozilla-style license to GPL |
Feb. 23, 2007
Alfresco Software Inc., an open-source enterprise content management software company, announced today that it will offer its next release under the GNU GPLV2 (General Public License version 2). The company's software was previously licensed under a variation of the Mozilla Public License (MPL), with a clause requiring attribution.
Alfresco was far from alone in its previous use of a customized, MPL-style license. Others included SugarCRM, Socialtext, Scalix, and Zimbra. None of these licenses, however, had been approved yet by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the body that governs open source licenses.
Now, however, according to Danese Cooper, Intel's senior director of open source strategy and secretary/treasurer of the OSI, there seems to be a growing trend back to the GPLv2 from the customized MPLs. "ComPiere Inc.," an ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) software company, Cooper said, "made the same choice a couple of months ago."
Alfresco seemingly agrees. In its press release, the company stated that Alfresco is leading what is expected to be an increasing number of open-source application companies to adopt the GPL.
Why? Because Alfresco's management feels that the move will grow and strengthen its developer and OEM (original equipment manufacturer) community. In addition, they expect it will put the company on a collision course with proprietary content management vendors, and set off what is expected to be a trend for open-source application developers.
Adopting the GPL allows Alfresco to provide customers with inexpensive community-supported software, while proprietary companies continue to charge millions of dollars for similar applications. The company has developed a content repository system designed to improve the collaboration, control, and compliance of business documents, web content, and associated business processes.
Cooper agrees that Alfresco probably will do better with the GPL. "While the OSI isn't ruling out approving more attribution licenses," she said, "you may find such boutique licenses limit the benefits you get from being open-source in the first place."
According to Alfresco CEO John Powell, "Moving Alfresco under the GPL makes a tough battle even tougher for those companies still shackled by proprietary licenses designed to control customers instead of empower them. Alfresco is by far the leading brand when people think of open source ECM and the move to GPL with accelerate that adoption across the development, OEM, and customer communities."
Alfresco will be offering three licenses, in total: - The first of these is for open-source projects. If customers are developing and distributing open-source software under the GPL, they are free to use Alfresco under the GPL License. If they are developing and distributing open-source software under an OSI-Approved License, but not the GPL, and want to link Alfresco's GPL software with theirs, Alfresco provides the GPL License with a FLOSS Exception (Free/Libre/Open-Source Software). With this exception license, developers can create software, under other existing OSI-approved open-source licenses, which incorporate the Alfresco Community software, without having to license the entire software package under the GPL. When the GPLv3 is finalized and released, Alfresco may decide to place its code under that license. For now, though, Alfresco remains under the GPLv2.
- For commercial OEMs, ISVs, and VARs that wish to distribute Alfresco with their proprietary products, and do not wish to license and distribute their source code under the GPL, Alfresco provides a flexible OEM Commercial License
- For Enterprises, Government Organizations, SMBs, the company licenses Alfresco Enterprise under a Commercial License to paid subscribers. This is similar to how MySQL, Red Hat, and other leading open source companies license their technology.
Those wishing to use Alfresco for free under the GPL are able to download Alfresco Community package.
Alfresco also stated that the re-licensing will not affect community users' rights in code they have accepted under the modified MPL prior to February 2007. However, if community customers download an update from Alfresco after the February 2007 release of Alfresco Community 2.0, the update will be covered by the GPL plus FLOSS exception. This license change does not affect Alfresco Enterprise customers or use of any software customers received from Alfresco prior to February release of Alfresco 2.0, the company said.
If you're not an intellectual-property attorney, and you want to know more about how these multiple licenses work, see the Alfresco licensing FAQ.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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