What is open source?

What is open source?

Posted Nov 30, 2006 7:53 UTC (Thu) by fyodor (guest, #3481)
Parent article: What is open source?

According to this article, SugarCRM hired Mark Radcliffe, the General Counsel for the Open Source Initiative, to draft their license. I don't know what to make of this, but it could lead to conflict of interest issues if they do apply for OSI certification.

I think it is reasonable for SugarCRM to insist on credit for their work, but what they are demanding here is that you run their advertising -- specifying exact page layout, banner size, etc. In this link (from the article above), John of SugarCRM says:

"Any additional libraries we may use are fully attributed in the about box of the software. Attribution goes both ways."

How is that going both ways? Maybe he should attribute those libraries such that it is "visible to all users and be located at the very bottom center of each user interface screen" along with a 106x23 banner ad linking to the home page of each library. If they want to insist on a "run our advertising banners on every page" clause, that is fine, but perhaps they shouldn't name the product "SugarCRM Open Source", put "Open Source" on their company logo, all over their home page, etc. Also, despite their logo, most of their products don't seem to be open source. "SugarCRM Open Source" looks like a crippled demo for their full-featured proprietary CRM products (SugarCRM Professional and SugarCRM Enterprise).

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