Victor Hastings wrote:
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.... ;-)

OK, now I'm really pissed of. Stop stealing my ideas! :D

On a serious note. There are currently like three bussines models out there. GPL double licensing, MPL + exibit B and proprietary.

Hard to tell which one works the best, depends on what a company wants. Those VC funded companies are on a track to sell out. Trust me, been there, done that :) Just start counting from a second when Sugar got their VC, and you'll see that they'll sell out (or do IPO) 3-5
years after that date. Big market share (number of users, not $$) does mean something in that situation. And, sure, they poured lots of money in marketing, but viral marketing induced by free distribution also played a big role, I would argue, even bigger than what a money can buy.

I dislike MPL + exibit B (badgeware) a lot. Although it opens a distirbution channels and prevents forking, it discourages people from giving a changes back.

And I truly dislike proprietary model :)

The problem with Centric is that it doesn't fit in any of those models. It is in a kind of limb, between GPL, badgeware and proprietary. Taking the worst from all of them :) I'm sure guys will address that, their CMO is too smart to miss something that obvious (hi Michael).

OK, Filip, you get the stock options before I do!

I'm sure that from Dark Horse's viewpoint, changing its license to GPL + FLOSS is like diving into a swimming pool without knowing if there is any water in it. It's hard to determine just how much the current licensing model is holding Centric back. My guess is that end users don't worry about it, but developers do. And without a strong community of developers, viral growth isn't possible.

This is a great discussion. Let me put my 2 pence in as well (approx 4 US cents) to the debate. So Centric CRM understand.

I fully concure with your appraisal of the market regarding SugarCRM and CentricCRM.

I am setting up a small hosting company with the core business model of identity management. I am implementing a (...frewe.ew *% k1 $£) service. I wont talk of all the applications I intend to use but a multi-tenented CRM is on my shopping list. Presently my intention is to use CentricCRM for the backend as I like it as a product. What I don't like is how Centric controls things. Your licensing model stops me dead in my tracks. I will do things for myself but I am retiscent to be involved in their community. I believe what you are attempting with the licensing model is CULTURALLY (only large so you dont miss what I think is an important point) against the open source folks mind set. I would love to do other things with it as I think it is a top product, well designed code in most places, an acceptable arch so it would scale, but for now it will stay in my back room and my customers will talk indirectly to it through web-services from my portal because I can't surface it to them at all. I to will prob
ably use sugarCRM on the fron end even though for me I think SugarCRM is an inferior product.

I will use openBravo for ERP when I get to it and its model is less of an issue for me cause it will stay in the back room. Appservers are jBoss (Portal + jBPM + Rules + ESB ) My directory servers are FedoraDS and database is Postgres.

When it cames to collaboration tools the market is in a similar mess with most really usable sollutions hidden behind a pretense of open-source. (Zimba,Scalix,OpenXchange) But I'm hosting and I like a profit sharing model so they eventually work if I treat them as a virus and seperate them from the stack.

Please dont take this as a broadside but you guys should know how we feel.

Precarious!

Thanks for listening
Graham

Victor Hastings wrote:
OK, Filip, you get the stock options before I do!

I'm sure that from Dark Horse's viewpoint, changing its license to GPL + FLOSS is like diving into a swimming pool without knowing if there is any water in it. It's hard to determine just how much the current licensing model is holding Centric back. My guess is that end users don't worry about it, but developers do. And without a strong community of developers, viral growth isn't possible.

Ok, we'll somehow split stock options ;)

Dark Horse viewpoint could be that. But, that's why I've given them an easy way to deal with it. Looking at Alfresco. If Alfresco starts to tank, then, yep, I was wrong, and Alfresco was wrong. If they explode, then, I was right (and I'm usually right ;) )

Alfresco went from LGPL (idiotic) to MPL+Exibit B (even more idiotic) to GPL+FLOSS (pure bliss).

Both companies have similar approach, similar product (in terms that it is almost finished business app), and similar growth in last year (I know that Alfresco had 400 % growth, and suppose that Centric is in same line)

Now, Dark Horse has just to watch what's happening with Alfresco. Centric will stay with the same license until 5.0 version (lots of reasons, including marketing cumulative effect, new version+new license).

So, Dark Horse could became a real dark horse of CRM market ;) Look how many people are here now that could find change VERY useful. And imagine how many more are out there. Rest of the explanation will be in answer to other post

I have only recently become aware of Centric CRM, and would like some licensing clarification before I waste too much time. How does Dark Horse Ventures define "internal use" as stated in their license agreement? Specifically, "The product features portal access to account information for external customers, allowing them to access their account details, trouble tickets and project plans via the Web...". Does this count as "non-internal use". For example, if I want to use it in a contact center with "internal" agents supporting "external" customers, would that be considered internal use, or a violation of the open source license agreement?

Thanks for your help,
Ray

Graham

OK, just to add few things. This is a classical scenario that is happening/will happen a lot more in the future. Not just hosting, but also system integration, and appliances.

So, back on licenses again :) (I'll repeat this a zillion times :) ). From your example (pretty much similar to what's happening around the globe) it is clear that we all will have a huge problem with different licenses.

OpenBravo is also badgeware, btw. Zimbra too. Alfresco was. Sugar is.

They all take the route which seems most appropriate for their particular product. And with that they fuck up integration.

It all comes from fear of forking. But MPL is an extremely stupid choice. It differentiates between modifications and derivative work. So, what happens. First of all, we have to go through all kind of hoops (like web services) to get what we want. And second, we are obliged to give back just modifications code, not derivative work (new files).

So, in fear of forking, they prevent code flow back. And integration too, because of damn attribution clause.

GPL + FLOSS is excellent choice. Almost to good to be true. You have protection from forking (because forks have to be public, so you just take the damn fork if it is so much better than yours, and put the best bits into your product). You have code flow. You have community. You have viral spread. You have easy integration with rest of opensource products. You have second, commercial license option. Several models of making money (support, "enterprise editions", bla bla)

Bets of all is integration path. It could offer us who know what we are doing, integrating best of breed products with ease and not worrying about licenses. And not dropping better products because license doesn't fit in.

Proprietary companies mostly have fully integrated stack. There's no fighting against that with lots of small islands in OS world. And then, to be competitive, OS guys try to put everything into their products. And always come short. So, there's like zillion of products out there, doing the same thing. And ALWAYS doing it not good enough.

Here's the deal. Liferay (JBoss, whatever), Alfresco, Asterisk, Openfire, Zimbra*, Centric*, OpenBravo*, and I'll move a mountains.

Today, its totally stupid situation. Alfresco is getting groupware functionality. Zimbra is getting chat. Centric also groupware. Everyone is plugging some kind of "documents" system. Total maddness. Instead of everyone covering what they do and know the best, selling that AND getting a benefit of being integrated into bigger picture platform, everyone is trying to copy what MS and IBM have for ages. ALWAYS falling short. Not to mention that MS and IBM especially dropped prices significantly.

However, I'll show off during this year what can be done with clever integration, and I hope people will realize how powerful that is, and start to cooperate, without a need for not invented here syndrome.

• products with badgeware, or not opensourceish license, so I'll break a few laws in the process. Fingers crossed that noone will sue me. Actually, they can, not much to money to get from that, though ;)

Ray Hoffpauir wrote:
I have only recently become aware of Centric CRM, and would like some licensing clarification before I waste too much time. How does Dark Horse Ventures define "internal use" as stated in their license agreement? Specifically, "The product features portal access to account information for external customers, allowing them to access their account details, trouble tickets and project plans via the Web...". Does this count as "non-internal use". For example, if I want to use it in a contact center with "internal" agents supporting "external" customers, would that be considered internal use, or a violation of the open source license agreement?

Thanks for your help,
Ray

Wouldn't that be hosting? External customers are your company employees or not?

"You may not redistribute the code, and you may not sublicense copies or derivatives of the code, either as software or as a service."

That I think kills hosting dream. "Either as software or as a service"

If you open it up to your employees, then it is internal use.

Ray,

The use you describe falls clearly in the allowed category. Our license only restricts your ability to redistribute Centric CRM or to provide services based on a hosted Centric CRM without a resellers agreement. The Portal capability was designed to allow your customers to view their own data and you are free to use it without restriction for your own call center. The restriction would apply only if you were selling access to the Portal.

Hope it helps, and please just ask if I haven't been clear enough.

-Tom

Wouldn't that be hosting? External customers are your company employees or not?

"You may not redistribute the code, and you may not sublicense copies or derivatives of the code, either as software or as a service."

That I think kills hosting dream. "Either as software or as a service"

If you open it up to your employees, then it is internal use.

No! Hosting is providing the application as a whole to third parties for a fee. Managing your own call center where the users of the system are your internal folks and providing portal access to your customers is not the same as hosting the application as a service.

-Tom

A bit more clear now. Sorry, jumped into conclusions. We are working on CC now, so had wrong picture in my mind :D