As I said, we did what we did to create a balance between a profitable company and and open source. I'm not saying its impossible, but it's difficult to be completely 100% true to the open source movement and to still make a profit.
If we had GPLd our code, for example, our only real avenues to make money would be via selling professional support. If we removed our "no ASP hosting" clause, other companies could just ASP host our product for cheaper and then there would be less of a reason to buy our hosting services. We didn't just create this application in our basement. We're a real company with a real development team. The project wouldn't exist today if we hadn't been able to bring in enough income to support our company.
Two years ago, we created the CATS Applicant Tracking System, an open source ATS for staffing agencies and HR departments. We've released our software as open source from the beginning under a Mozilla based license with a few additional restrictions in an "Exhibit B" clause. We required that our logos and copyrights cannot be removed from visibility and that the software cannot be used in an ASP hosting model. We then run "CATS Professional Hosted", which is an ASP-model version of CATS hosted on our servers for $29.00 per user. We also sell professional support services for $495 per user per year. We are currently bringing in a good bit of money using this method. SugarCRM follows a similar business model.
While the Exhibit B clause does add some additional restrictions that may not be quite as "open source" as GPL'd code, it does provide a good balance between supporting the open source community and making a profit. Our Exhibit B clause is below, if this helps.
CATS Public License 1.1 Exhibit B:
Additional Terms applicable to the CATS Public License:
You MAY NOT use the Licensed Software to operate in or as a time-sharing, outsourcing, service bureau, application service provider or managed service provider environment.
The following copyright notice must be retained and clearly legible at the bottom of every rendered HTML document: Copyright 2005 - 2008 Cognizo Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
The "Powered by CATS" text or logo must be retained and clearly legible on every rendered HTML document. The logo, or the text "CATS", must be a hyperlink to the CATS Project website, currently http://www.catsone.com/.
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As I said, we did what we did to create a balance between a profitable company and and open source. I'm not saying its impossible, but it's difficult to be completely 100% true to the open source movement and to still make a profit. If we had GPLd our code, for example, our only real avenues to make money would be via selling professional support. If we removed our "no ASP hosting" clause, other companies could just ASP host our product for cheaper and then there would be less of a reason to buy our hosting services. We didn't just create this application in our basement. We're a real company with a real development team. The project wouldn't exist today if we hadn't been able to bring in enough income to support our company.
While the Exhibit B clause does add some additional restrictions that may not be quite as "open source" as GPL'd code, it does provide a good balance between supporting the open source community and making a profit. Our Exhibit B clause is below, if this helps.
CATS Public License 1.1 Exhibit B:
Additional Terms applicable to the CATS Public License:
You MAY NOT use the Licensed Software to operate in or as a time-sharing, outsourcing, service bureau, application service provider or managed service provider environment.
The following copyright notice must be retained and clearly legible at the bottom of every rendered HTML document: Copyright 2005 - 2008 Cognizo Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
The "Powered by CATS" text or logo must be retained and clearly legible on every rendered HTML document. The logo, or the text "CATS", must be a hyperlink to the CATS Project website, currently http://www.catsone.com/.