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Well, I don't know what you want to use it for.
I'm going to take a wild guess and say you're trying to manage work, tickets, or something to that effect.

I'd try SugarCRM http://www.sugarcrm.com/
It's open source and free (without support)
It's the biggest open source CRM I know of.

Every alternative to Access I've seen is terrible. So I'd stop looking for something that replicates Access and start looking for something that does what you're wanting access to do. You might even settle on several applications if you're using access for multiple things.
 

There are a few. Red Hat is a good sized company. Springsource had a reasonable-sized business (tens of millions in revenue) before being acquired by VMwware. mySQL was similar in revenue, and got acquired for crazy money by Sun. There's SugarCRM. But in general .. most of the really valuable companies have really valuable software they keep under lock and key.

The documentation for SugarCRM Community Edition is located here: Sugar Community Edition 6.0 Documentation.

License This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License (“License”). To view a copy of this license, visit http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

This license forbids both commercial use and creation of derivative works. Now, download a copy of the community edition here. Unzip it and look at the "license.txt" file.

GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3, 19 November 2007

So, which is the mistake?

This first license is for the documentation only; the Sugar CE codebase is licensed under the AGPL.

The documentation for SugarCRM Community Edition is located here: Sugar Community Edition 6.0 Documentation.

License This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License (“License”). To view a copy of this license, visit http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

This license forbids both commercial use and creation of derivative works. Now, download a copy of the community edition here. Unzip it and look at the "license.txt" file.

GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3, 19 November 2007

So, which is the mistake?

This first license is for the documentation only; the Sugar CE codebase is licensed under the AGPL.

License This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License (“License”). To view a copy of this license, visit http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

This license forbids both commercial use and creation of derivative works. Now, download a copy of the community edition here. Unzip it and look at the "license.txt" file.

GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3, 19 November 2007

So, which is the mistake?

License This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License (“License”). To view a copy of this license, visit http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

This license forbids both commercial use and creation of derivative works. Now, download a copy of the community edition here. Unzip it and look at the "license.txt" file.

GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3, 19 November 2007

So, which is the mistake?

A bit of poking around indicates that the community edition is released under GPL v3 and the paid edition is released under this variation of the Mozilla PL. Someone want to dig through it and work it out?

The Pro edition is being licensed under a proprietary EULA, which even contains Bitkeeper-like non-competition clauses regarding the community edition. It that sense it is even worse than MS-EULA, which at least allows you to mess around with the few open source components Microsoft has released.

A bit of poking around indicates that the community edition is released under GPL v3 and the paid edition is released under this variation of the Mozilla PL. Someone want to dig through it and work it out?

The Pro edition is being licensed under a proprietary EULA, which even contains Bitkeeper-like non-competition clauses regarding the community edition. It that sense it is even worse than MS-EULA, which at least allows you to mess around with the few open source components Microsoft has released.

A bit of poking around indicates that the community edition is released under GPL v3 and the paid edition is released under this variation of the Mozilla PL. Someone want to dig through it and work it out?

*reads reads reads*

Section 2.1, and Section 2.2 pretty much say you can distribute the original code with or without modification indiscriminately. ... So... yeah, one should be able to simply buy it once and then "fork" it from the original and provide it free.

A bit of poking around indicates that the community edition is released under GPL v3 and the paid edition is released under this variation of the Mozilla PL. Someone want to dig through it and work it out?

Open source is profitable because professional services is profitable. Open source companies like jBilling, SugarCRM and the like make most of their revenue not from selling licenses, but all kind of services around the software they created that they know well. If you want to deploy jBilling in your company, who do you call? Well, the guys that wrote it would be a good choice.

Add to that companies like IBM, that make a lot of money on consulting and that type of services...

Oracle itself makes a good share of its revenue from support. Try to buy an oracle license without support, you will get called every other day by an Oracle salesman offering support. Try then to upgrade to a newer version of Oracle: you'll have to pay all the years of support you did not pay first.

So Oracle knows very well that software services is profitable, and open source is just a way to distribute software to maximize professional services revenue.

SugarCRM has a community version that is FOSS: http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/ Definitely check it out, might save you some man hours that would be needlessly wasted on an in-house CRM solution.

Is anyone else struggling to find the actual article? My CPU and fans went crazy on the actual article.

If you ask me, open source projects need to do these to appeal to the outside world:

• Treat the project like an actual marketable product, look at UltraVNC homepage It's delicious, you'd almost expect that you would have to purchase it. The author is obviously passionate about all these features. The download page even has videos for parts of the product!
• Naturally, put lots of beautiful screenshots and videos
• Advertize open developer chats to get user feedback. Maybe a moderated IRC channel which could then be turned into an interview on the website.
• Create narrated videos with Wink. Take a look at some o
• Using Mozilla's Press Center as a guide, I found the following:
• • A dedicated press email address. You could set up an email address that autosubmits to your bug or issue tracker I reckon.
  • Links to all closely related communities, like Mozillazine, Foxiewire and For the Record. Anything that expresses 'community support' to a journalist will be juicy!
  • There's a list of rewards and awards down the right side. This kind of thing is quoted by magazines, stuff like 'worlds most secure browser', of course you need reviews first.
• User testimonials. Look at OpenVPN.
• Have a section called 'Community' and link to the IRC channel, mailing list and web forums.
• KDE has a section called 'KDE for your business'. It is explicitly trying to sell KDE to users by suggesting success stories of real people
• Impress businessy types makes me go cool.

If you want support from everyday people, you have to sell them the idea.

Have a look at SugarCRM. May I also recommend this podcast: http://twit.tv/floss32

http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/ is the right one.

That is one advantage the For Profit Companies have, Management can get good developers to work on Code they don't think is 7337 or fun or interesting but needed to get the job done.

I work for a company that chose Sugar CRM. We wanted something where we could connect it to our own customer database, and could add links to our own tools, like extra buttons to edit the customer info, purge them, perform system maintenance, etc. Unfortunately, none of the systems we found allowed this. The best we could do was to find an open source system that was easy to edit. We modified the pages to include extra buttons that link to external web applications. It's not the best integration, but it works. I was actually very disappointed that none of the tools offered any kind of "plug-in" functionality.

You say you want a ticketing system, but that doesn't sound like what you really need (if it were, I'd suggest RT for issue tracking or Trac for defect tracking).

I'd take a look at SugarCRM, or one of it's forks instead. MySQL only, so be careful to keep regular backups.

Aren't SugarCRM partnered with Microsoft?

And hasn't MS said that it will have nothing to do with GPLv3?

Wooooo... INCOMING!

It was really bad legalese-ridden license. And, yes, with the restrictions on free distribution and the advertising clause (that was worse than the old BSD one), it clearly isn't free or open-source, even if the company claimed that themselves.

BTW, I've come across one of the threads with "user pressure" on this issue, which I found interesting.

Also, there is an official press release and an FAQ list on the license change.

It was really bad legalese-ridden license. And, yes, with the restrictions on free distribution and the advertising clause (that was worse than the old BSD one), it clearly isn't free or open-source, even if the company claimed that themselves.

BTW, I've come across one of the threads with "user pressure" on this issue, which I found interesting.

Also, there is an official press release and an FAQ list on the license change.

Oh I don't know....let's read their FAQ: http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/gplv3-faq.html

"SugarCRM believes the GPL v3 will become the standard for all open source licenses, and wanted to get a head start on adopting that standard."

Thank you Bruce. Someone needed to explain the situation a little better.

I've seen this problem for a while from my experience with SugarCRM. They use a modified Mozilla Public License Version 1.1 (SugarCRM Public License) that requires attribution with a logo on the bottom of every page. This was not the case initially but when SugarCRM was at version 1.5 a company used the Open Source license to create their own product (vTiger CRM) and it pissed off the people at Sugar so they changed the license. Now on the vTiger homepage they advertise with "Tired of kinda, sorta Open Source? Get the honest Open Source: vTiger CRM". SugarCRM isn't really Open Source. They are just profiting from using that term.

I am glad OSI is cracking down. These companies are misleading consumers into thinking they have certain freedoms because their software is "Open Source" but it really isn't. Oh, and don't give me that crap about you can define Open Source however you want. Open Source needs to have a concrete definition or it means nothing. Companies like SugarCRM are damaging that definition. If everyone got to define Open Source it would have no definition.

Thank you, Bruce. Like many here, I was trying to figure out what Tiemann found so objectionable about SugarCRM's license. Being based on the Mozilla Public License, it looks very much like a lot of open-source licenses out there. It took a while to spot the "badgeware" clause hiding down at the very bottom:

And suddenly that's no longer open source, because "open" doesn't just mean you can see it. It means you can use it and modify it for any purpose you want, including making new software for distribution, without jumping through hoops. As a developer, that's always been my understanding. This is "available, but branding-encumbered" source.

One place you should definitely checkout is http://www.sugarcrm.com/. It's waaay beyond anything I need, but it might fit the bill.

1. Zenoss
2. Qumranet
3. rPath
4. Simula Lab
5. MontaVista Software
6. SugarCRM
7. OpenAir
8. Themis Computer
9. Scalix
10. Incumbents and Dealmakers (non-entry)

I have an installation of SugarCRM "Open Source" on my laptop that I am using for evaluation purposes. I attempted to install a plugin created by a developer, and somehow it modified the code that displays the SugarCRM logo image on every page. All of a sudden, I was completely locked out of the system. I could no longer log in, even to disable the plugin that I had installed. The error message "Please replace the SugarCRM logos" kept popping up every time. So I Googled around a bit and found this article about "Badgeware":

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=867

Apparently this "feature" was added into the code to try and prevent companies like vTiger from doing exactly what the parent poster said - exercise their rights under the "Sugar Public License". You can't even post the word "vTiger" on their forums without it being censored:

http://sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20207

There are lots of companies trying to jump on the open source bandwagon, but not many that actually stick with a "real" open source license like the GPL.

I have an installation of SugarCRM "Open Source" on my laptop that I am using for evaluation purposes. I attempted to install a plugin created by a developer, and somehow it modified the code that displays the SugarCRM logo image on every page. All of a sudden, I was completely locked out of the system. I could no longer log in, even to disable the plugin that I had installed. The error message "Please replace the SugarCRM logos" kept popping up every time. So I Googled around a bit and found this article about "Badgeware":

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=867

Apparently this "feature" was added into the code to try and prevent companies like vTiger from doing exactly what the parent poster said - exercise their rights under the "Sugar Public License". You can't even post the word "vTiger" on their forums without it being censored:

http://sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20207

There are lots of companies trying to jump on the open source bandwagon, but not many that actually stick with a "real" open source license like the GPL.

In regards to CRM - I've been using sugarCRM for about 6 months and its been rock solid, with pretty much everything I need to run a quickly growing business. Nice and robust, good forums of users willing to help, and a number of hosters offer it as a one-click include. I found it via the magic google query of ["open source" crm] - just like I found the reporting tool (jasperReports) via ["open source" reporting].

I only ever search through sourceforge, freshmeat etc when I have a name of software that I am specifically searching for - otherwise I find you end up wading through 100's of apps that are abandoned, alpha, etc. I do believe those sites serve a useful purpose, just not as the first point to search.

SQL-ledger is a good bookkeeping package (and a whole lot more) and SugarCRM can handle the CRM side of things. There's even some glue scripts out there to keep the client info sync'd between them.

I'd also add Zimbra to the list of very good non-SourceForge projects. However, to be fair, the original poster was referring mostly to word of mouth being the primary source of info, nothing in the post said, "anything not on SourceForge is te suxors!"

What about the Open Source CRM Systems?

SugarCRM's document feature does exactly that (web-based check-in/check-out). Plus, it's open source (yay) and does a bunch of other stuff, which you may or may not need (I believe you can just turn off other modules/functions that you don't need so that they don't bother you).

http://www.sugarcrm.com/

Funnily, I just had a co-worker email about a solution to a problem he'd been having with some web programming stuff that took him a while to nut out. It's being implemented in a client's internal web-app, but the solution is something we will probably want to know about in the future... It's not an area I'm working on at present, so have no interest in looking at the solution now and diverting my attentions, but I just know it'll be something I will wish I had easy access to down the track.

So while what I said above holds for finding out the information in the first place, it would be great to have a company internal storage area for things that will be useful in more than one project. To that end we've actually been looking at various apps out there like NetOffice more.groupware, Sugar CRM etc.

Now when we were looking at these products it was from a sales, support and development standpoint... so there are features geared to sales teams and the like... but they all have file management, meeting management etc.

We'll be implementing a system like one of those soon, and I think it's going to help enormously for our team communication as we are situated on a number of sites.

I'm amazed asterisk@home wasn't the first thing posted here. Don't be fooled by the @Home part. This is a full fledged install of asterisk that is only limited by the hardware you install it on. You can have a working PBX in an hour. I'm planning to install this at all my remote sites (6 of them) with free extension call throughout and then plan to install it at my main location (150 phones) and have it all interconnected. A VERY powerful solution.

(Note: I just copied the rest of this from the handbook so I don't have to retype it all)

The Asterisk@Home project enables the home (or small office) user to quickly set up a full featured Asterisk PBX with a web based interface in about an hour on a dedicated PC. Even if you are new to Linux, Asterisk@home handles that by handling the complete Linux install for you. In order to get up and running all you need to do is download the Asterisk@Home .iso and burn it to a CD. Boot that CD and you will get a very complete Asterisk and Linux install.

Asterisk@Home provides a nicely integrated install of some of the best software from the Asterisk community, such as the Asterisk Management Portal, which provides an intuitive Web GUI for configuring asterisk, and the Flash Operators Panel, which lets you see and control your Asterisk PBX in realtime, and FAX support through span-dsp.

What is included in Asterisk@Home 2.0:

Linux CentOS 4.2 - http://www.centos.org/ - CentOS is 100% compatible rebuild of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), in full compliance with Red Hat's redistribution requirements. CentOS 2, 3, and 4 are built from publically available open source SRPMS provided by Red Hat. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendor's redistribution policies and aims to be 100% binary compatible. CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork. CentOS is for people who need an enterprise level operating system with stability to match without the associated cost and support.
Apache Web Server (2.0.52)
MySQL Database (4.1.12) - SQL database for Call Detail Reports and optional configuration information.
Php (4.3.9)
Asterisk 1.2 - http://www.asterisk.org/ An open source software implementation of a telephone private branch exchange (PBX). A PBX connects one or more telephones on one side to one or more telephone lines on the other side. A good example of this is a small company with 100 internal telephones sharing 20 outgoing/incoming telephone lines. A PBX can be more cost effective then having 100 direct telephone lines.
AMP 1.10.010 BETA - http://www.coalescentsystems.ca/ - Asterisk Management Panel is a web based GUI that allows you to easily manage Asterisk without having to edit sometimes complicated text configuration files. This package is can really make a difference in learning and configuring asterisk easily.
Flash Operator Panel 0.24 - http://www.asternic.org/ - Flash Operator Panel is a switchboard type application for the Asterisk PBX. It runs on a web browser with the flash plugin. It is able to display information about your PBX activity in real time. You can see what all of your extensions, trunks, and conferences are doing. You can also hang up, transfer, initate a call or create a conference call.
Festival Speech Engine version 1.96 - http://festvox.org/festival/ - Festival is a speech synthesis system. It allows you to enter text that the Asterisk@Home server "reads out loud" to anyone calling the server. Using this, you can be sure the same voice is used across the whole asterisk server.
SugarCRM with Cisco XML Services interface + Click to Dial - http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/ - SugarCRM is designed to a be a complete customer/contact manager. Using SugarCRM we can manage all types of communications (faxes, te

If I were to do it again now, I would avoid Quickbooks too :) It has some stupid problems.. like requiring accessing with single-user mode to do certain regular tasks (something to do with liabilities).. This of course means that the ESC server (QB connector) has to be stopped so QB can go into single-user mode, and then started again afterwards. It's a real pain in the ass. I've talked to QB support about it, they just say 'thats the way it is, theres no plans to change it'.

Unfortunately, there's very little in the mid-sector accounting world.. you basically get the $100-300 range programs, and then the $10k+ programs. There are a couple O/S applications starting to look promising though. Compiere, WebERP, OSSuite , and SugarCRM.

I'm actually looking at deploying SugarCRM along with our current software. It has SOAP connectors, so I should be able to link the customer database with the ESC customer database. That's a couple months off though, there are other priorities first.

Anyway, good luck!

I haven't been impressed with many of the packages because there is no user training. ... even if they had support and training wouldn't I have to pay for it?

This sounds more like you are reluctant to pay for anything, rather than you ran into a lack of training options. It is true that SugarCRM doesn't put up their training workshop material for download. They offer their training workshops as a for fee service.

That is not a drawback of how SugarCRM uses Open Source, that is a benefit. When you say "It seems that you end up not really saving any money by the time you account all the resource that open source cant provide at least in the case of CRM and ERP systems" you are indicating that the only value you see that Open Source offers to you is the potential for zero software code acquisition cost. When the real value lies in the control you can exert over the code base to customize it to your business' specific requirements.

Even if SugarCRM ends up costing you the same as Siebel or Salesforce.com after training and support are factored in, you gain one additional benefit for that equivalent cost: you are not dependent upon SugarCRM's developers to fix/modify the code. If you really need something done, there are third party developers out there who can offer to deliver before SugarCRM's own coders get around to your request. After what I've seen conventional CRM and ERP projects suffer through, a benefit like that can make or break your ability to implement a new business process dependent upon automation that you think will give you an advantage over your competition.

That might not be important to your business. Fine. But to say what you posted is to miss the key long term business rationale for Open Source enterprise software. The economics of low cost software acquisition are gravy, almost a distraction because software at this level of complexity is not a product. The strategic opportunities offered by Open Source solutions to a business due to its open-ended nature as contrasted to closed software are the key differentiator. For example, your business or your business' trade association can add the API and API documentation you find lacking in an Open Source solution. If a similar API in the equivalent closed source solution doesn't offer a particular capability you want, you could be waiting a very long time before it is implemented, if ever.

Note that this is a separate issue from your general unhappiness with ERP and CRM software in general. I noticed your complaint against Microsoft CRM's lack of training material as well. I share your general disappointment, and have some strong opinions on why users in general are only reluctantly satisfied with this category of software. This is not the place to discuss that. I just wanted to point out that knocking SugarCRM, or complex Open Source solutions in general, for not providing a zero cost end-to-end deployment solution, could cost you to overlook a valuable tool and way of thinking for your business.

www.sugarcrm.com says you're wrong.

I already had an install of SugarCRM so I just used that.

It's essentially the same thing, especially when you consider that what you're selling is yourself and your skills.

I've been looking for a CRM solution for my company, Venn Technologies, Inc.. IMO, the best Open Source CRM out there right now is SugarCRM. I covers the basics at least. It doesn't have hooks for issue tracking and billing just yet but they are working on that. Currently, I'm evaluating SQL-Ledger and GNUCash for tracking the financials.

Clickable URLS:
SF.net: SourceForge Project
Corporate site: SugarCRM.com
Demo: Demo

Clickable URLS:
SF.net: SourceForge Project
Corporate site: SugarCRM.com
Demo: Demo