SugarCRM 6 Released, But Is It Open Source?

darthcamaro writes "SugarCRM markets itself as a professional open source company and this week released version 6 of its Sugar platform. But the main new feature is a new user interface that isn't available to users of the community version — it's only available to paying users. No they don't claim to be open core either, they claim it's all open source, even if you have to pay for it. '"Open source doesn't mean free and was never really meant to mean free," Martin Schneider, senior director of communications at SugarCRM, said. "Open source runs through everything we do, it enables us to be transparent and gives customers more power. We are an open source company and it's why we're better than proprietary companies."'"

Comments

This has bothered me for a while...

[Anonymous Coward]

Strong advocates of "open source" always talk about how having access to the source is a kind of freedom, and that's true. Personally, I would prefer if all software that I purchased came with the source code (and the means to rebuild it) - because this gives me the freedom to fix bugs or make enhancements myself (and also to pay someone else to do it, i.e. to avoid vendor lock-in). It's an important freedom to have, **but** it's a big jump to then say that not only should I have the freedom to see and modify the source, but I should be able to share the whole source - even the parts I didn't write myself - with anyone I want to, without permission from or kickbacks to the original author(s). That is certainly nice, but it's not a "freedom" so much as it is a privilege.

Is the source "open" just because I have access to it along with the software...? I say it is. If I can also give it away to others then it's also "free", but that would be in the as-in-beer sense, not the as-in-speech sense.

The main reason I often prefer "open source" software is because I, personally, get access to the source code - not because it's free in cost, but not either because everyone else "in the wild" can get it too.

Re:Open source

[snowgirl]

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.