Tom Manos wrote:
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

Tom,

Thanks for the clarification. Here is an additional scenario... what if I provide call center services for Government agencies and wanted to use Centric CRM to support the call center operations, (accessed only by my internal CSRs)... does that violate the license agreement?

Thanks again,
Ray

Filip I soooo so agree with your comments.

These guys (open source ??? vendors) are shooting themselves in the foot like MS trying to put it 80% there in the OS. The flag is just set at the top of the hill and now they are setting log traps for anyone who follows type mentality. Nearly there but not quite. Your left with trying to pull it out and put the proper thing in and then use glue and tape to hold the house of cards together. You never know JitterBit might help. Frankenstein’s monster. If they only focused on their core.

You said in a previous post "Alfresco is getting groupware" Ill have to hide that. "Zimbra is getting chat" maybe Ok as you can integrate with Zimlets but will hide documents that's in Alfresco. "Centric also groupware" will have to hide that and start those bloody pumps.

Agreed "Total madness. 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. "

I am quite a follower of Geoffrey Moore of "crossing the chasm" fame, as specialist in launching high tech products. He makes the point (just cant find the quote) that the only successful open-source companies are when they truly remove their controls. Take the reigns off. It is like our experience as parents. We eventually have to let our children make their own decisions but we hang on too long mostly and they don’t turn out so bad in the end. Maybe not exactly what WE wanted but what they wanted.

The only community I can say I am working very closely with is Sun’s first forays into open sourcing their identity products which is my core business. AT present they are holding it like it is a glass jar and guess what, no matter what the value of the product the community sucks because the vendor is controlling. The community stays away. My thoughts as a player in the open source community.

I like CentricCRM but can’t see myself investing big unless the models change. I would even devote a head to the job but not at present.

My thoughts
 
Graham

By the way to see how successful the community is just check out the effort of the community documentation. After all that is the community’s job.

Send us your ideas and we will put them OUR product and we will call it open source because we will let you see the source code. Right....

Centric decide what happens and just hope the community will follow. To use Dr Phil's words "How's that working for you then?"

Why have a community if its not open because if its not open you won’t have a community. (Chicken egg problem)

Check out the progress. I know some of these have just started but it is and will be the same old story.

Your sitting there scratching your head and wondering why don't they get it. But we're also sitting there scatching our heads and wondering why dont they get it?

https://www.centriccrm.com/ProjectManagement.do?command=ProjectCenter&pid=122
or
https://www.centriccrm.com/ProjectManagement.do?command=ProjectCenter&pid=121
or
https://www.centriccrm.com/ProjectManagement.do?command=ProjectCenter&pid=72

Filip, Peter, Lucio, Grant and others (I sound like I'm at the Academy Awards here) thanks for adding your thoughts to this thread. It's a great one. The issues of "what's open source", and "how open should a model be", etc. are critical issues and one we do think a lot about. So let me interject my 2 cents.

Like our model or hate our model, we've tried since 2000 to 1) focus our business model on our customers, 2) our partners, and 3) follow the ethos of open source as closely as possible while creating a viable business. And I must say, it's not easy balancing the range of conflicting dynamics. A few points on each of these.

1) Focus on our customers. In 8 years I've never had one of our customers complain about our license. Admittedly, they are not Open Source experts (note my use of upper case here). On the other hand, what they get is total access to our source (compare this to Sugar Pro & Enterprise); don't have to pay anything to get to it (again, compare to Sugar); they can modify and change it; and the modifications are theirs to do with what they want (again, compare to Sugar's model or the GPL). We don't force them to GPL it or CPL it. Their choice. If they want it back in the core so we'll maintain it, they have to jointly assign copyright to us so we can do so. It is a very friendly license to them and we can't hold them hostage in any way -- at least I don't know how we would. If they want to stay in a maintained process then pay for "maintenance".

2) Focus on our Partners: Believe it or not, our goal is not to control the world. We obviously couldn't if we wanted to -- Gates beat us to it. :) Our objective is to collaborate with lots of great people who want to work closely with us, from around the world, to create killer software that makes end customers really happy, and make a few bucks so we can go visit all those folks. And right or wrong, our belief is that in order to do this we need to protect them and us in a commercial way. Thus, we align our interests contractually. Pretty basic stuff, but the objective is to make sure that those who choose to partner with us have a viable economic engine against those that don't choose to partner with us. Fortunately or unfortunately depending upon your viewpoint, the world is still competitive.

And we're getting there. We don't have thousands of partners, but we have roughly 50 or so, many of whom were one time Sugar partners, including some of our most important -- e.g. Corratech, Spikesource... -- that are increasingly active and beginning to have significant success in the market. We want more but not at the sake of compromising their models and our own (We still want to be able to afford the trips to visit them and pay for the wine).

3) Balancing the ethos of open source. This is thorny mainly because everyone has a different viewpoint as to what it means. And often are vehement as to their correctness. From my point of view, at the end of the day you have to be comfortable with what you're doing, how you're doing it, and being as transparent as possible so there's nothing "hidden up the sleeve". So how do certain stakeholders see our claim of "openness"?

From our end customers' point of view we're 100% open. In fact, almost invariably they like our license and model better than OSI approved licenses like the GPL. Which makes sense: if they want to develop something they appreciate the control of deciding which license to put on their extensions, be it an OSI license, our CPL, or something they come up with. It is entirely their choice. (Note: this level of control for end customers is also greatly appreciated by our partners as they can thus guide the end customer to an appropriate license, be it ours or something else)

From our partners points of view, we're open. We try to put everything out there in terms of code, information, process, etc. We have roughly 8,000 in the community and it's growing fast and the partner network is really beginning to get its legs. If nothing else, we good folks to partner with. Try us.

From non-allied organizations who want to redistribute Centric without a commercial relationship, they would definitely say we're not open. We're comfortable with that level of disconnect.

So, Sugar may have more paying customers. But, they're not the guys we're after. We're targetting folks like Salesforce, Siebel, MS, etc. and having success (won and implementing a Siebel replacement deal after going head to head with Sugar). We have some very large customers and moving toward multi-thousand seat deployments. Unfortunately, at this time most of these are not announcable and are under NDA. But you'll be hearing more soon.

Last point: creating great software is not a race. At least not to us. It's an intense process that takes a lot of time and close collaboration with others. We're comfortable from a product point of view that we stack up okay, but there's a lot more to come soon. And stuff that should excite you -- e.g. portlets, etc.

Anyway, sorry for the book and thank you for your thoughts. I hope we can continue making you guys happy in whatever configuration fits your particular needs. And come visit us in Norfolk. Weather is great and libations on us.... after work of course.

- David

David, the one group you didn't mention is the open source community. Partners, yes, but what about developers who might write Centric plugins and decide to share them with the world?

As near as I can tell, you don't have that community. And that might be a conscious decision on Centric's part -- to have strategic alliances with partners rather than rely on the OS community.

Hi Mr. Richards,

As I started this thread, so I think I should close it ;)
You being a CEO, with this answer, I think we got final and definitive answer. No Open Source from Centric. Which is OK, you being comfortable with your current business model, it's great.

Though, I'll go through most of your points (being a stubborn bastard :) ).

1.) Customers usually don't care too much about licenses. This model that you have is actually very common model when big(ish) companies work with small ones. It is very common clause in contracts that source for internal use has to be provided, which guards big companies from having a trouble in investing in some technology, if small company flops. And I think you do have a basic (but common) misunderstanding of GPL; if customer makes some kind of modifications, they can use whatever license they want, IF THEY DON'T redistribute. GPL is about distribution. You are limiting distribution anyhow. Looks a lot like your model, doesn't it? Can you hold them as a hostage? Of course :) We aren't children here ;) After first month of using your (our any) product, there's almost no coming back. Costs of implementation, training, data entered and collected, transition costs skyrocket with every single month they use yours (or anyone else) product. When mentioning mr. Gates, keep in mind his "release early, release ofte
n" mantra. That's what made him richest man on planet. I will get to the other MS mantra really soon :)

2) Partners. Nice to hear that you have that much. Of course we are in competitive world. We are partners with lost of companies. I sold several Wildfire (Openfire) licenses. I'm selling Zimbra. I will sell enormous amount of Alfresco (trust me on that one). Being so comfortable in your own model, you are missing that some other models work the same or even better. Can I sell your stuff? Maybe. But just as a standalone product. I can't integrate it with anything. Nor will I try. To risky. To many licenses out there anyway. Another, totally different one is just one too much.

3) Yep. And no. There is a clear definition of open source. To be frank, I'm not an extremist :) But, definition is there, most people adhere to it, some don't. You are far far away from commonly accepted definition. That's a fact, sorry. And that's probably why that Open Source sign screaming from your site, and your involvement in Open Software Alliance can appear irritating and ironic to some people. It could be interpreted like riding an OS wave ;) Although you are clearly trying, I don't really think that your current license and model can or will change accepted definition.

You mention several times through your post thing like "economic", "be able to travel (eat too :) )". I told you once, and will told you again, there's nothing wrong with you being comfortable with your current business model. But, why implying that other models don't work? Plenty of companies made shitloads of money on GPL, even from selling/supporting system level software (longlived, HAS to be stable), not to mention opportunities that are opening with business applications (which have to move much faster to stay competitive and give customers competitive edge, for which customers are ALWAYS willing to pay).

There's no essential difference between GPL and your license that could be harmful to you. At least not one that I can see (ASP maybe being a biggest obstacle).

One cannot distribute your software without paying to you. If they make an addon, they can license it how they want, but freely use it only for internal use. Distributing = paying.

One cannot distribute GPL without giving all the code. If customers changes something and doesn't distribute, they don't have to give code back. If a customers wants to distribute GPL code with its own modifications, but like closed product, under any license they choose, they have to pay to you for commercial license. If customer wants to distribute GPL code with modifications and derivative work, without paying to you, then it must publish a full code.

GPL (+FLOSS exception) with commercial license is exactly the same model that you have now - ASP. But, + more partners, integrators, bigger market share, MUCH bigger distribution channels, community and code putbacks. Even MPL + Exibit B (which is an utter stupidity) is helping an obviously inferior product to gain much more.

"Last point: creating great software is not a race. At least not to us." Cmon, don't want to be offending, but creating a software is a God damn extremely exausting race. And there's no such thing as great software ;) We all know that :) We develop the damn thing. You can have a greatest software in the world, when a market is taken, there's no easy way for winback. Just too expensive.

I'll finish my book with three mantras from THE best:
"excellent is enemy of good"
"release early, release often"
"developers, developers, developers"

PS
I am not a crusader nor extremist. I have to eat too, you know :) I just wanted to point out with this discussion that you could give up some of control in exchange for a great chance to became a market leader. Those chances open rarely. And window of opportunity usually closes fast. Though, with probably lots of your own money invested in what you are today, I respect your choice.

Regards,
Filip Šelendić
Protenus d.o.o.

Filip,

I love your stubbornness. If your partners are anything like you, Protenus will undoubtably succeed. Accordingly, we'd LOVE you guys as resellers if you eventually see fit to work with non-OSI open products.

Anyway, I won't try and refute your points. I agree with some, not all. And appreciate how much you've obviously thought about this space. As have we. I'd like to say we're 100% sure in our approach. We're not. We continue to think about, discuss, and argue over this issue internally. At some point, we may change dramatically.

At the end of the day, however we keep coming up with the same (somewhat disappointing) conclusion -- an OSI license directed at an application like CRM is not conducive to creating a compelling product or company. What's the evidence of this? Reality. There aren't any. And none have evolved since we founded the company in 2000. Why? Well, that's anybody's conjecture. Ours is that products like CRMs are simply too prone to forking. And this dynamic kills the economic engine one needs to keep investing (considerably) in the development of solid features, good UI, etc. Consider Sugar and vTiger and Compiere and their recent fork.

This is not a done issue for us as it's so important and, believe it or not, we are prone to wanting to find an OSI approach that works. In fact, we will increasingly be releasing parts of our code, and significant pieces, under OSI licenses. Stay tuned. We are nothing if we're not pragmatic, so if you have ideas for working together contact us directly (contact@centriccrm.com).

As well, come visit us if you're in the States or we'll stop by Croatia on our next spin through your neck of the woods.

best,

-David

Dear Mr. Richards,

Nice to hear that you are still investigating your options. My partner (which is actually an American) will probably be in US in few months. Visiting Pentahoo. Maybe we could arrange something. If not, and if you got a money to travel ( :) ), then coming to Croatia would be a GREAT idea. Beautiful country, trust me, especially in early and late summer. Come to vacation, if you haven't anything else planed. We'll arrange something nice for you.

On other points, yeah, we will probably become resellers. Have no problem with that. Actually, I do have an agreement on my desk, but been busy busy busy. The problem is in integration part, we are integrating a pretty big number of technologies. I don't want to sell Centric as an island, I want it to be fully integrated in rest of the stuff.

About OSI licenses and that model not working for CRM. You can easily skip 57 of them :) Went through them all. Was actually a BIG enemy of GPL once. Also mostly sharing your point of view. But, one morning, woke up, and seen the light :)

On the matter of forking, the Jargon File says:

"Forking is considered a Bad Thing — not merely because it implies a lot of wasted effort in the future, but because forks tend to be accompanied by a great deal of strife and acrimony between the successor groups over issues of legitimacy, succession, and design direction. There is serious social pressure against forking. As a result, major forks (such as the Gnu-Emacs/XEmacs split, the fissionings of the 386BSD group into three daughter projects, and the short-lived GCC/EGCS split) are rare enough that they are remembered individually in hacker folklore."

Forking GPL usually never works ;) You are the biggest motherf***r in town. You carry the brand. Do more work. Have infrastructure. And can easily swallow forks advances, if there are any.

Consider this. One BIG company tried to use and announced that it will us Oracle offer for RedHat Linux support. The next day whole hell broke loose on them. Mails, phone calls from community caught them by surprise.

vTiger is not a fork anymore, it is a totally different product. For which noone knows about ;) Adempiere is a fork, which will probably fail. They don't have a good enough reason for forking. Although, Compiere is a big pile of "beeep". I spent 6 years on ERP :) so I know what I'm talkin about.

And with both of them I don't see them doing some serious damage to original products (yet, but I don't think there will be any in a future). It is not an easiest thing in a world to fork with success, you know. You have to take a really shitty product but with lots of potential, know its insides extremely well, know the particular business requirements, build something considerably better, build up your community and infrastructure, lots of time, money, and work. And you are always one step behind of original product, not to mention that with GPL, original product and company can take all your advances for free anytime it chooses.

So, OK, take it slow, take it easy, see what happens with Alfresco and Openfire, you can put MySQL in mix, but, from what I've seen, you guys are an ideal candidate for nice painless transition to GPL. Nice, almost finished product, that could explode in matter of months. Will there be forks? Probably. Will they gain traction and hurt your business? Doubt it.

What I would do, if my money is on a stake. I would announce intentions to do license change. With 5.0. Would be all over the place to improve brand strength until it happens. You have, what 6 months till 5.0? More? Use that time to position yourself. Big companies will avoid you like a plague because you are GPL (big IT players, I mean, that could pose some real threat to you, if hijacking your code, they would have to open their own), smaller will be discouraged and crushed by your size and recognition. Slashdot, OSnews, Theserverside, Javalobby, PRNewswire, all the usual free channels to advertise.

Keep in mind what you have. You have THE ONLY usable Java based CRM that could go GPL (if I keep bothering you ;) ). That means basically that you have THE ONLY enterprise ready CRM on planet that could go GPL. Enterprises are notorious for their willing to pay for support ;) With the state of your product, you could actually go in totally proprietary route. But that part of market is already very crowdy. Staying in the middle doesn't make to much sense for me. Who dares, wins, isn't that how saying goes ;)

Ok, enough from me :D Can be a big pain in the a** sometimes when I'm in a "zone" for writing stuff :D

Regards,
Filip Šelendić
Protenus d.o.o.

Filip,

Have sent my wife a link to Croatian night spots so you can expect our visit soon. We promise to leave the kids and animals behind :)

Please, any of your team that's in the States, have them stop by. Love to talk in more detail about how to work together and discuss business and life in more detail.

And again, your licensing points are good ones. We will be back to you (and the rest of the community) with some new thinking in the not so distant future. We're getting there, one..... slow.....painful..... step at a time.

best,

David

PS., Please call me David; I keep thinking you're talking to my dad :)

Well, David, I'm a bit younger than you, and was always taught to respect older than me (ESPECIALLY if they made several rounds of multimillion companies ;) ). Kind of an reflex to me, even I'm not THAT young anymore.

Great to hear you are still reconsidering :) Looking forward to new annoucements and developments about this topic.

And really, if you haven't been here in Croatia (have to do something for our tourism too, while here :) ), a great place for a vacation. A REAL vacation. Sun, sea of unbeliveable color and beauty, friendly people, peaceful and quiet, lots of nice old architecture and art (old, like over 2000 years old) with a Dubrovnik as a crown jewel. And if you like sailing, well, this is a place to come for that ;)

Regards,
Filip Šelendić
Protenus d.o.o.