Change of Licence to AFFERO

[murray99]

I got the email in December saying that the licencing was changing to Afferro.
My understanding of this is that it's a copyleft licence and any code that touches EspoCRM now must be made public and anyone can access it. Is that the case of have I miss understood the intention of the licence. Similarly, if I write an module and have to make it public, don't the Espo guys have to make all their extension public in the same way?

What is objective of the licence change?

if you can put me right on this as at the moment, if I have to publish all my customisations, I'll probably stop using it which would be a shame.

Can someone put me right on this?
Thanks

[yuri]

Hi,

We described the reasons why we switched to the AGPL in our blog post. The main reason is a "SaaS loophole" in the GPL. There are many articles and blog posts on the internet on this matter.

> My understanding of this is that it's a copyleft license

Right. It used to be the GPLv3 before, which is copyleft as well.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

> any code that touches EspoCRM now must be made public

Not any code, but derivative work. Users of the product should be able to receive the source code of derivative work. Not necessarily made public. Note that only copyright holders can require you to abide to license terms. No one else can force you.

The quote from the GNU website: "The GNU licenses are copyright licenses; free licenses in general are based on copyright. In most countries only the copyright holders are legally empowered to act against violations."

> don't the Espo guys have to make all their extension public in the same way

Copyright holders can give license exceptions, it's stated in all GPL licenses. Moreover, only copyright holders can request withdrawal of the license in a case of violation. The software license is the license from the copyright holders to users. Copyright holders have right to release derivative works under any license. As well as to provide exceptions to anyone as long the exceptions give more permissions than the base license.

AGPL is popular today, there are many products that adopted this license. For example, Nextcloud. You shouldn't be worried about it unless you are a SaaS provider: who highly customized EspoCRM and won't provide sources to your users by their requests.

For companies that have a policy regarding AGPL (big companies often have policies over AGPL or even GPL products), we are going to dual license EspoCRM soon. It will be the same code but under a different non-copyleft license (commercial or source available).

[Firyo]

Hi,

We described the reasons why we switched to the AGPL in our blog post. The main reason is a "SaaS loophole" in the GPL. There are many articles and blog posts on the internet on this matter.

> My understanding of this is that it's a copyleft license

Right. It used to be the GPLv3 before, which is copyleft as well.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

> any code that touches EspoCRM now must be made public

Not any code, but derivative work. Users of the product should be able to receive the source code of derivative work. Not necessarily made public. Note that only copyright holders can require you to abide to license terms. No one else can force you.

The quote from the GNU website: "The GNU licenses are copyright licenses; free licenses in general are based on copyright. In most countries only the copyright holders are legally empowered to act against violations."

> don't the Espo guys have to make all their extension public in the same way

Copyright holders can give license exceptions, it's stated in all GPL licenses. Moreover, only copyright holders can request withdrawal of the license in a case of violation. The software license is the license from the copyright holders to users. Copyright holders have right to release derivative works under any license. As well as to provide exceptions to anyone as long the exceptions give more permissions than the base license.

AGPL is popular today, there are many products that adopted this license. For example, Nextcloud. You shouldn't be worried about it unless you are a SaaS provider: who highly customized EspoCRM and won't provide sources to your users by their requests.

For companies that have a policy regarding AGPL (big companies often have policies over AGPL or even GPL products), we are going to dual license EspoCRM soon. It will be the same code but under a different non-copyleft license (commercial or source available).

Hi there,

Just wanted to ask something,
If someone is a SaaS provider, what a changes have been applied in practical terms ?
Are they now "forced" to give their whole customizations to their clients who are asking for ?

Regards,
Firyo.

[yuri]

Hi,

> Are they now "forced" to give their whole customizations to their clients who are asking for ?

AGPL implies this. GPL implies you giving the sources when you distribute the product. AGPL implies you giving the sources when you provide access to the product over the network.

For questions concerning SaaS and licensing, please contact us via the contact form.