I don't want to sound like more sour grapes, but I have to concure. This move has been handled in my opinion pretty poorly. A change in strategy like this is going to take more than a change in name and website colour to sit with me. Especially as I agree, that announcing/releasing features then deciding to revoke them i.e. email gateway isn't funny. Some of us having been spending a some time building and our company and planning some client support strategies around this, plus waiting for it to be released. As I see little movement on the Integration front with the OpenSolutionsAlliance, leaves me to reevaluate this product.

I see why the change has been made. I just think a little earlier warning would have been nicer. This feels like my hand is being forced and that is never something I or my clients respond well too.
 

Simon

I agree entirely. If things don't change they will only hurt themselves.

- Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

This thread has digressed a bit but seems to be getting back on track.

... - I am really trying to understand what Concursive's strategy is with regards their Open Source products. There is no mention of Open Source on your home page and little or none elsewhere that I can find.

If you (Concursive) could please explain what your strategy is for your Open Source platform it would be most helpful.

I am making my decision very shortly on my choice of CRM to both use internally and to recommend to our clients. The choice is not just about features and technicalities...

Thanks

Alan

Michael Harvey wrote:
Alan Lord wrote:

Many of the other "commercial" Open Source vendors are now moving to an even more open strategy (such as going GPL) in a effort to attract customers and grow their business. I'm thinking of several companies here such as Alfresco, SugarCRM, OpenBravo, Zimbra, Sun... I would be very concerned if Concursive's strategy is to go in the opposite direction.

Hi, Alan, we will be posting some more polished explanations of our various editions shortly. In the meantime, I want to make a brief observation about some of the other open source vendors you mention. Each of the companies above takes a different approach to licensing. SugarCRM, for example, has a community edition newly re-licensed under the GPL. However, their Professional and Enterprise editions are licensed purely under a proprietary license. OpenBravo uses a "badgeware" style license based on the MPL that requires a "powered by OpenBravo" logo and is thus not OSI-certified. Zimbra, recently purchased by Yahoo, now licenses its open source edition under the Yahoo Public License which is also not OSI-certified. And Zimbra also maintains functional differences between its open source edition and its commercial editions. (More information here: http://www.zimbra.com/products/product_editions.html). MySQL's enterprise edition includes administration and installation tools not provided to open source users. Even Alfresco--which might be the purest open source play amongst the companies you mention--reserves, as I understand it, some "secret sauce" that they only provide to commercial customers.

My point is that all of the commercial open source vendors--including us--continue experimenting with various business models, including licensing schemes to strike the correct balance of, openness, community support and participation, and a viable economic engine.

Thanks,
Michael Harvey
EVP, Concursive

Hi Michael.

You experiment too much :D Btw, YPL for Zimbra is basically GPL with badgeware.

Very nice product. The more we use it internally, more I like it. It is just a bit too expensive for out market.

Now that you have VC, I am a bit concerned about no mention of OS (half) nature of your product. I do understand that VC has probably put some financial targets upon you guys, but I kind of fail to see how nobody recognizes that all of recent big OS buyouts were driven by number of users, not revenue (sometimes even 20+ times bigger buyout than yearly revenue)

GPL3.0 plus Affero clause gets my vote :D And I hope you haven't abandoned OSA.

Speaking of Alfresco (remember, was first to warn about them), they are killing recently. Phillips is moving whole company, kicking Domino out, Whirlpool also, kicking Documentum. Both were political decisions from top, driven by open Alfresco nature, and the money involved is surreal.

This "we are kind of open source" will hurt you in long run.

Btw, did I mention how great I find your product? :D

Your license doesnt allow me to redistribute the software, so I cannot use it. I believe your company would have not lost anything by using a GPL instead of your own license. I was attracted to CentricCRM because of its LGPL and that has vanished. Does anyone have the 4.1 source available? Could you post it somewhere? I would be interested in starting a fork of this project.

Bryan,

Sorry, but our core code has never been LGPL, including the 4.1 code. It's always been licensed under the Centric Public License, which allows free use and modification, but prohibits redistribution. Version 5.x Community is still licensed that way.

You may be thinking that we are LGPL because we do have some code that we distribute under the LGPL. Our tools package, for instance, which defines and encapsulates our API is LGPL so that others can freely use it to integrate other packages with other licenses to our code without license collisions.

So it would be a violation of our license to fork our code.

Tom Manos wrote:
Bryan,

Sorry, but our core code has never been LGPL, including the 4.1 code. It's always been licensed under the Centric Public License, which allows free use and modification, but prohibits redistribution. Version 5.x Community is still licensed that way.

You may be thinking that we are LGPL because we do have some code that we distribute under the LGPL. Our tools package, for instance, which defines and encapsulates our API is LGPL so that others can freely use it to integrate other packages with other licenses to our code without license collisions.

So it would be a violation of our license to fork our code.

Good morning Tom,
i'm talking to Concursive to evaluate the development of some new functions for some of my customers.
All our customers use the community edition (as we use the open source concept as a strong and specific marketing argument) and now we are starting to have some requirements for specific functions like team account management (for example)
I've discovered yesterday that this features is in development but will be available only in Enterprise edition.
My customers choosed Centric and my company in a open source model point of view.
Now i have no a clear map of the functions included in one distribution and in the other and i have a little embarassment to answer to some questions.
The same think is true for the roadmap.
I think you have to be more informative about this issues to solution providers.

Now, let's look to some scenarios:

1) I talk to my customers and i have to explain that now concourse suite editins are separated in features (customers feel this as a retreat from the open source model, i want to say to you, but is up to you :-) ) and if they need team account management they have to move to enterprise edition.
They have to pay a new annual fee for this (the most probable thing it's they will not accept to more than double the support contract and i have to support a cost to myself (and this is up to me :-) )
I hope they do not choose to move to another kind of platform.

2) I choose to develop by myself an alternative functionality to solve my customer's needs and do not run the risk to loose the customer.
I develop this and include it on the community edition only.
Is this a fork?

I would like to know what is your opinion about the possibility community starts to move community edition source away from your vision (for example no web 2.0 fetatures and a product configurator for sales process..) to another one...

Thank you

Lucio Magini
Antica Bottega Digitale srl

Just to add one more voice to the disappointment. I was happy to sell Concursive to our customers here in Australia, because we thought the Open Source version would not be crippled an include heaps of value not present in other CRM systems. Now given Concursive is a _more_ expensive option then other proprietary systems, we will are forced to look elsewhere again. Very disappointed with this turn-around in attitude and was looking forward to basing a new CRM support arm of my business around Concursive.

dave kempe wrote:
<snip />... Now given Concursive is a _more_ expensive option then other proprietary systems, we will are forced to look elsewhere again. Very disappointed with this turn-around in attitude and was looking forward to basing a new CRM support arm of my business around Concursive.

Hi Dave,

I am in total agreement. Take a look at OpenCRX for a better alternative.

Alan