You have a good point. They have a nerve calling it open source. We have stuck with it because of some of the features but the lack of a real community with users helping other users really hurts. The lack of upgrade scripts for all the db's also points to a quest for services income that may be self defeating. I like the product but it NEEDS a real community

Just my two cents:

Centric is better than Sugar crm but Sugar have a real community supporting it.
In my opinion this can be a formidable strategic advantage in the long run.
Please think about this.

We have started to talk to people about Centric crm here in Italy but they only know Sugar...so ok, let's start to explain all from the begin.. ;-)

One thing about the licence: Centric license prohibits us distributing your product, but what about our customers?
It seems to me they can download Centric crm source code and use it, so what happen if they ask us to go there and develop with it?
We are not distributing, we are only giving consultancy.

What should we do? Should we refuse this opportunity?
Should we try to explain: "hey customer, we've shown you the best crm j2ee software in the world. Now you can take the free open source version, but wait, please, take the enterprise one because we are a little embarassed with Dark Horse Ventures" (?) :-)
They do not understand, of course.

May be soon we will ask Dark Horse Ventures to sell us support to understand centric internal, or to develop new modules.. but this is all another story and really do not concern licence.

Maybe we've not undesrtand too well the licence, but if these is not the case, i think mr. Šelendic has definitely rised a question Dark Horse Ventures have to think a lot.
Centric licence limit seriously centric diffusion and adoption.

One episode: 3/4 months ago i have offered an article about Centric crm to a sun sponsored open source oriented portal here in Italy called java open business (http://www.javaopenbusiness.it/)
They have refused my contribute after they have read centric licence (right or wrong it's not the question) and in the crm section there is an article on Sugar crm (!!!!).

:-(

Lucio Magini
Antica Bottega Digitale

Hi, guys, and thanks for your comments. I have made the same post in the "Centric vs. Sugar" thread that Filip has also posted in. Here is what I asked there:

• ***

Filip, first thanks very much for your comments. It is very obvious that you are passionate about the topic, and your enthusiasm for Centric CRM comes through clearly.

You say that this will be your last post on this topic, but I'm hoping that isn't true since this is an important conversation. It is also important that we get the licensing part of the business right. You point out a bunch of downsides to our current licensing approach, and all of them have been discussed at length internally at Centric, and continue to be discussed on an almost daily basis.

However, you overlook some of the downsides to going with, say, the GPL. I would actually be very interested in your thoughts on this matter.

First of all, as regards SugarCRM, they do not have an OSI-approved license. Their open source product is licensed under a modified Mozilla Public License that includes a branding clause: every user page of the redistributed Sugar product must include their logo and a link to their website. This is an example of the "Badgeware" phenomenon that is reasonably controversial within the open source community because it is a clear attempt to limit redistribution without actually putting those words into the license.

Second, whereas there is really only one open source operating system (Linux) and one web server (Tomcat) and a few application servers and other middleware components like databases, there are hundreds of applications. It is not at all clear that the same licensing approach that worked for the infrastructure components will work for applications. In particular, there is the very real issue of forked code: witness Sugar with vTiger (forked before Sugar implemented its badgeware license) and the recent community fork of Compierre. As for the ASP issue, hosting is not currently recognized as a form of redistribution by the OSI or any of the OSI-approved licenses. In short, there is nothing to prevent a commercial entitiy from setting up a hosting service with software that they don't have the expense of maintaining.

I am genuinely curious as to your thoughts on these matters and hope that you will reply.

Michael Harvey
Chief Marketing Officer
Centric CRM

Hi Michael,

in my opinion sugarcrm badgeware license works better for "viral" diffusion and this make a lot of difference for the market.
Centric crm licence prohibits and stop viral distribution.
As a matter of fact, Sugar is much more known now.
A lot of people will never know the existance of Centri crm and will choose the only thing they can know, Sugar.

The second point you touch it's not completely true.
Yes, there is only one apache, but there are, for example, almost three database engine really good (MySQL, Postgres and Firebird)

Products:
There are some open source applications that really are market leader: Alfresco and Liferay and they have no fork at this time.
really have no competitors.

Some are consolidating this:
Jasper reports
Pentaho
Ezpublish

In my opinion they all share a factor: they are killing frameworks for consultancy.
They give a base to develop solutions for customers better than commercial products thanks to the possibility to develop customizations and verticalizations.
This is the way partners do money today.

Still there is no a java open source crm recognized by the market
Still there is no a serious java open source groupware recognized by the market.
Centric crm can be THE java crm and also THE groupware (with some work), everybody here know this.
The problem is that very few people know it.

Michael Harvey wrote:
Hi, guys, and thanks for your comments. I have made the same post in the "Centric vs. Sugar" thread that Filip has also posted in. Here is what I asked there:

• ***

Filip, first thanks very much for your comments. It is very obvious that you are passionate about the topic, and your enthusiasm for Centric CRM comes through clearly.

You say that this will be your last post on this topic, but I'm hoping that isn't true since this is an important conversation. It is also important that we get the licensing part of the business right. You point out a bunch of downsides to our current licensing approach, and all of them have been discussed at length internally at Centric, and continue to be discussed on an almost daily basis.

However, you overlook some of the downsides to going with, say, the GPL. I would actually be very interested in your thoughts on this matter.

First of all, as regards SugarCRM, they do not have an OSI-approved license. Their open source product is licensed under a modified Mozilla Public License that includes a branding clause: every user page of the redistributed Sugar product must include their logo and a link to their website. This is an example of the "Badgeware" phenomenon that is reasonably controversial within the open source community because it is a clear attempt to limit redistribution without actually putting those words into the license.

Second, whereas there is really only one open source operating system (Linux) and one web server (Tomcat) and a few application servers and other middleware components like databases, there are hundreds of applications. It is not at all clear that the same licensing approach that worked for the infrastructure components will work for applications. In particular, there is the very real issue of forked code: witness Sugar with vTiger (forked before Sugar implemented its badgeware license) and the recent community fork of Compierre. As for the ASP issue, hosting is not currently recognized as a form of redistribution by the OSI or any of the OSI-approved licenses. In short, there is nothing to prevent a commercial entitiy from setting up a hosting service with software that they don't have the expense of maintaining.

I am genuinely curious as to your thoughts on these matters and hope that you will reply.

Michael Harvey
Chief Marketing Officer
Centric CRM

Thanks for a reply. Me telling that this is my last word on a subject implied that I won't push you into something that you don't want to discuss. It wouldn't be fair that my moaning on your forums disturbs your current customers :)

Now, if you really want to discuss it (and are discussing it internally) then, lets move on a bit.

First of all, threat to your current users with your current license; if you go down, noone can pick up the work. They will be stuck as with any proprietary product. Having a code wont help them much, because they wont know what to do with it, and there is no big community supporting the product, knowing its internals. Also, patent threat; where's indemnification? It is a threat for you and for your customers. Patent wars are coming, and there are some initiatives (and will probably be even more of them) to make a patent pool, and a patent protection funds, for OS software, developers and customers.

I apologize for not knowing that Sugar changed its license. "Badgeware" is a new trend, and in my opinion will soon fade. It protects from forking nicely, but it creates lots of problems (aside for not been able to carry OSI approval).

My take on it is this; there's a recent EU study which claims that by 2010 4% of complete EU GDP will be made in OS software IT. Huge amount of money. Now, to be able to install all of that software to customers, a new breed of companies will form, lets call them open source integrators. People that will take the best of breed, and integrate within existing stuff that companies have (be it open or proprietary). Now, imagine, if I want to offer something like that, using badgeware Sugar, Scalix or Zimbra, Alfresco (with its former license), and maybe tie those with several other products, like Mule, 3/4 of my screen estate would be covered with brands, logos and trademarks. That's why me, and soon others will probably avoid those products like a plague. Those new companies will definatelly want access to the core team members, proper documentation, proper support, would sponsor new features, help with integration, to keep their growth and customers happy.

There is no silver bullet in OS licensing. I definately don't know what are your internal finances, where the money is actually coming from. So, I can't pretend to be super smart about what you will loose in transition to any other license. ASP thing is actually the only unclear point, not sure what cash flow you have from those, but I assume that ASPs would also like to have a support, and GPL3 will force them to give back the code they improved.

But I can speculate.

Licences like MPL, Apache, BSD, LGPL are not best suited for this type of product. It is mostly feature complete, and many companies would misuse those to just take, rebrand it, and screw you.

I used to dislike GPL, but it makes a lot of sense to me recently. GPL is actually the best license to go with if you have a (almost) finished product, and don't want forking. Forks could appear, but then it is all about branding, size of company, expertise and support. Any GPL fork has to stay GPL. Which means that you have to get the new code. If you manage to keep your top position, the forks will be small and insignificant (like that Sugar fork, and Compiere fork, and to be frank, both products suck royally, it is a wonder no one forked them before). Yes, the threat is still there, but it can be worked around. If there is ultra better fork, great, make some noise from marketing perspective (there's no bad press from marketing perspective, right? :) ), and absorb the code :) Keep on top.

GPL with FLOSS exception is even nicer. Makes us OS integrators worry less about which OS license goes with what. Which can be a true nightmare sometimes (like, does Apache go with GPL, not a
single lawyer on earth will give a definitive answer).

With GPL you will definatelly loose some bigger companies that would work on product if it had other licenses, thus loosing some manpower, but those big guys would eventually screw you up, bundling your product and selling it as their own. Thats something I think you should avoid anyway.

So, for your type of product, my 2 cents are, either badgeware, or GPL with FLOOS exception.

Now, I kind of admire Alfresco team (and kind of think that you should bundle with them as a repository, because some of their stuff is brilliant). Those guys went from pure MPL to badgeware MPL and now to GPL with FLOOS. They are quite strong in some EU institutions and some EU members agencies. The main question is why. Why did they change their license? What were the motives? It was all very hush hush and fast. They are venture funded, have money, have customers, have similar business model as yours (except they are charging hefty amount of money for premium partners, which I actually find OK, if someone wants to ride a brand wave, it should pay the brand carrier). If you can find answer to that question, things should be much clearer.

For me, the future is integration, cooperation (why would you have a groupware, and a repository, and Alfresco will too have a groupware and repository). It may seem a rather bleak for you guys, because you don't integrate, but I'm sure that you would love to BE integrated, and to get those three biggies: users base, community, users percepcion. Give us a chance to distribute, some guys will not acknowledge you, but some will. There will be a paying partners. There could be bundles with RedHat and Novell and other GPL OSes. Prebuilt hardware appliances. New translations. Community.

Just my thoughts. I'm kind of biased, because I have to give my sales guy a solution soon, and he is selling like 2-3 appliances a week :) We have a full Java stack, I would hate if I had to bundle Suger with it :)

Regards,
Filip Šelendić
Protenus CEO

I'm probably way over my head here but I will add my comments anyway. (There is another thread on this board involving many of the same participants and topics -- hope I picked the right thread to post in.)

I'm an attorney, but I'm not an expert on the various open source licensing models, and I'm not a software developer. I'm speaking as a potential end user.

Michael pointed out that ASP hosting is not recognized as redistribution by OSI. And I understand his concern that anyone would be free to host the software, for a fee, without sharing the cost of its development. But couldn't you address this issue with a certified host/reseller program, and letting hosts/resellers pay you for the privilege of carrying that title? Most companies that are evaluating their CRM options will steer clear of the gypsy hosts in favor of ones that have certified by the factory -- don't you think?

I can't pretend to know whether Sugar's market dominance over Centric is a matter of licensing, feature set or simply big VC bucks. After all, Sugar's licensing is oppressive, and that hasn't stopped them.

But I do know that when I sat down with a developer to talk about integrating CRM with my Java-based custom web app, he told me that integrating Sugar would be more expensive and complex, because Sugar isn't Java based. (I asked him if he had heard of Centric, and he said no.)

If I were Dark Horse Ventures -- and I'm not -- I would give some serious thought to emulating Alfresco's licensing model. Alfresco got some nice pub when it went GPL + FLOSS. I hope the same thing would occur for Centric.

Victor Hastings wrote:
I'm probably way over my head here but I will add my comments anyway. (There is another thread on this board involving many of the same participants and topics -- hope I picked the right thread to post in.)

I'm an attorney, but I'm not an expert on the various open source licensing models, and I'm not a software developer. I'm speaking as a potential end user.

Michael pointed out that ASP hosting is not recognized as redistribution by OSI. And I understand his concern that anyone would be free to host the software, for a fee, without sharing the cost of its development. But couldn't you address this issue with a certified host/reseller program, and letting hosts/resellers pay you for the privilege of carrying that title? Most companies that are evaluating their CRM options will steer clear of the gypsy hosts in favor of ones that have certified by the factory -- don't you think?

I can't pretend to know whether Sugar's market dominance over Centric is a matter of licensing, feature set or simply big VC bucks. After all, Sugar's licensing is oppressive, and that hasn't stopped them.

But I do know that when I sat down with a developer to talk about integrating CRM with my Java-based custom web app, he told me that integrating Sugar would be more expensive and complex, because Sugar isn't Java based. (I asked him if he had heard of Centric, and he said no.)

If I were Dark Horse Ventures -- and I'm not -- I would give some serious thought to emulating Alfresco's licensing model. Alfresco got some nice pub when it went GPL + FLOSS. I hope the same thing would occur for Centric.

Few clarifications. SugarCRM was once GPL. After they grew up considerably during GPL times, they changed that license to SugarCRM license, which is basically MPL with attribution clause ("badgeware"). Neither of those licenses are oppressive from a distribution point of view. Thats why anyone can distribute basic, or community version without too much hassle (with this new license, you just must put logo on the screens).

Sugar has or looks more modular, more configurable, and more feature complete. Nothing spectacular, though, that couldn't be catched up in few months or a year, if more people start contributing to Centric. We would like to beef up a mailing component a bit, for example (we are in Web2.0 world now, after all :) ). Also, I kind of like Centric because it is not looking so complex as Sugar.

That Java vs PHP argument that you've heard from that developer is true. As you can see, people from Centric are evaluating options about which licensing model to choose for next license change. If there will be any. I sure hope it will. Getting 5.0 out of the door with new license would be a nice marketing touch :)

Filip Selendic
Protenus
CEO

it seems quite funny to me that you are criticising SugarCRM license while acclaiming centric one, because, apart of SPL owns criticisim, the fact is SugarCRM SPL is more open source than Centric CPL which is not open at all but privative.

Open Source Licensing is about distribution rights and Centric denies any distribution rights.

Open Source is not about just having access to source code and let you see or modify it. Nobody can deny your right over your own work which is under intelectual property laws and it is only yours. The point is to control your rights of distribution. An open source license is that which give you the right to distribute derivative work and Centric CPL license take away that right from you, so it is a privative license which goal is to deny you using your rights.

Please take a look at OSI definition of open source license and compare it with Centric license.

Victor, thanks for your thoughtful post.

I want to respond to your musings about whether Sugar's "dominance" (to use your term) is due to the product, the license, or the VC funding.

In no particular order, here are a few observations I would offer:

First, recall that Centric CRM did not undertake any marketing efforts at all prior to April of last year, ie., less than 12 months ago. Since that time, we've seen tremendous acceleration across all fronts of our business including growth in this community site, demos and downloads, interest from press and analysts and, of course, customers. Our revenues are growing significantly faster than Sugar's.

Second, keep in mind that Sugar is still a small company. Although they don't publish revenue figures, they still represent a tiny fraction of the CRM market. The only relatively new player who could be said to be exerting dominance is Salesforce.

Third, Sugar has raised over $25 million in VC funding. Despite their claims that their open source business model allows them to spend very little on marketing, they obviously spend a very significant amount of money on marketing. I think this, more than anything, creates the impression of "dominance" that you're talking about. I don't think they have done anything truly "disruptive" (to use a term they like to employ) on either the product or the business model or the licensing side. They've done a good job creating a solid product, and they are employing a fairly traditional enterprise software sales model backed by pretty traditional marketing support to generate awareness and sales.

I would genuinely welcome other's thoughts on this topic.

Thanks,
Michael

Hello Michael,

I guess I need to define my market. I think SugarCRM "dominates" the open source CRM space, or at least gets mentioned far more than any other competing open source product. They got a great review from PC Magazine last year; that has to help. Obviously they don't take a lot of market share away from the proprietary CRM packages (yet).

As far as marketing is concerned, jeez. I found Centric last year in a Google search. You landed me for free, more or less.

My million dollar idea is that if I were Dark Horse, I'd beat feet down to Atlanta and explain to JBoss how my product would be a perfect complement to their JEMS stack. I know CRM is an app, not middleware, but a lot of companies that use JEMS need CRM too, and you have the only mature pure Java CRM package in the world. Centric would be a great fit with their product line. You'd have a CRM package with full-blown workflow and business rule support, right out of the box. (Take a look at SugarCRM's "workflow" functionality -- it's a joke.)

I'd also be talking to the Alfresco people about integrating or co-marketing Centric. ECM and CRM are kissin' cousins anyway. Alfresco already makes significant use of JBoss's BPM and BRM, so they could give you a few hints.... ;-)