Hi,

I was passing by your site coming from dotproject, and since i use vtigerCRM, i must say that you are right as to vtiger being based on the code of SugarCRM.
I must say that i also like SugarCRM, and also tried it.
The problem with SugarCRM if you see their projects for the future Open Source versions they will have limited features, i guess they are using their OS to sell the commercial version, and that's fine by me but gives me little hope as to it's future in Open Source.
vtigers team pick up a version of SugarCRM with a license that grant's them the right's to change the source in order to continue to add real value to SugarCRM tool and making it feature rich.
If you try the demo or visit their site in www.vtiger.com, you will notice that SugarCRM appears always as the base code for the tool, so proper credit is given to SugarCRM, and i think that is the right way to do it and even mandatory.

So many thanks for your time on reading my comment, i hope it clarifies things.

Most OS licenses (GNU, MIT, etc) require the copyrights to remain within the code, not displayed within the client. I'm assuming you're referring to copyright code removal within the source itself...

Part of the license it was granted under required that copyright notices are kept intact. At one point, this requirement was being ignored, if they are within the proper terms of the license, then this is a good thing.

CEO, Caseysoftware.com

Actually, the sad part is that SugarCRM is tha bad guy in all of this. You've got to love their advertising clause in the new license. I can only imagine a derrevative of a derrevative of a .... all you see is advertisement logos with one line of GUI on top. Now that's Open Source!

As another CEO of a company trying to do good and make a living at it, a few observations.

1) This isn't about the technicalities of a license. It's about copyright. Anyone taking someone's work and stripping it of its copyright only to be relabeled as another's is just plain wrong, unethical, and self-defeating.

2) This is a great case study in the ongoing debate of whether intellectual property should have protected rights (i.e., should software be patented). I believe, as did many during the Enlightenment, that protecting property rights is fundamental to the definition of civil society.

3) Lastly, I think it's also a great human lesson of tolerance. In essence, this is about different cultures, values, and beliefs, and the struggle to understand each other after the initial round of, "Are you insane?!".

Hi,

I kinda like this discussion, so let's add a post from one of the vtiger's team in their forum:

"SPL 1.1.2 (the previous license) is compatible with Mozilla Public License, a well known open source license. The main (only?) change between SPL 1.1.2 and 1.1.3 is the requirement for incorporation of their logo, which does not conform to open source guidelines published by OSDL. In fact, as of SPL 1.1.2, use of their logo was prohibited, which is standard practice - for example use of Red Hat or JBoss logo is prohibited in third-party products incorporating code from those systems.

We would like our distribution to comply 100% with open source guidelines, so that it can be freely used in any open source project. Hence, post their 1.0 code, vtiger has not incorporated their code.

Mani"

The topic is "how does vtiger include latest sugarcrm codebase version?" and can be found here http://www.vtiger.com/discussions/viewtopic.php?t=491&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

I like SugarCRM very much but just for the knowledge whenever you post the name vtigerCRM in their forum it get's censored like ......CRM. This is odd, to say the least.

Anyway, let me tell you that i understand your point and i understand in wich side o barricade you're on.

Companies and CEOs have their duties their responsabilities, have expenses and people to pay, and they decide what's the best way to run their bussiness.

Open Source is another way of making bussiness, sometimes it may be scary to interpret a bussiness in wich you don't have propritary control over nothing and make money flow.
Open Source is based on direct service to the client, and service is never cheap, and it is diferenciative, no one can give better support than the ones o built the beast (ok microsoft is not included here, their support sucks, and isn't cheap either, maybe that's why bill is so full of it $).
As to MS, I have the strong believe that what made MS was piracy. Believe or not but this is the fastest method to increase software's recognition and dessimination. Even MS was recently offering/sending packages of their sotware to American military for supposed testing they said.

Now about your points:
1)As to licenses let me tell you the first thing I do when installing something is not to read the license, because all it says is "I made this, you paid for it but don't count on it for doing what you want, if it blows your bussiness is your problem, i got nothing to do with it and don't even think of sueing me because my lawyer wrote this little thing just in case. By the way if you don't agree with me don't even think about installing it, it is mine. If you even think about passing my little baby to a friend or 40000 friends, remember that i made this cow, so the milk is mine and i will see you in court.". I further like the begining of the documentation "Thank you very much for purchasing of the new ... version ...". As to copyright, you and i know that any 12 year boy with a DVDRW 16X as copyright to copy anything, he has no concept of enterprise and slicing profit with is acts. You are right when you say "Anyone taking someone's work and stripping it of its copyright only to be relabeled as another's is just plain wrong, unethical, and self-defeating." I myself feel sad when this happens to me, seeing people getting credit of something they didn't do, it is called stab in the back but "hey" isn't this what happens everyday in enterprises, between workmates.
There will allways be ones who rise by themselves and others who rise at the cost of first. Sad but true.
I feel sorry for small software companies, and hope they survive by buying when i can.

2)I think things are fine as they are. Explanation: propietary software may patent whatever they want, they pay for it and there's a lot of public workers who need their hands meet around copyright.
Open Source people have their copyleft their Boston Tea Party, maybe software instead of tea but i think this is a revolution going on and you know how this is in managnment, you may be the train, you may catch the train our you may be cought by it.
Software is not real estate, is a digital representation of a need and a solution, i am happy to see that Open Source is getting to be a valid alternative to proprietary software, what i mean is that whatever function you have in propietary you can have from Open Source, so windows or linux will correspond equally to the needs of the user has to Office Documents, painting, browsing, mailing ...
Software houses will continue to be nedded because the will allways have support needs.
Eventhough i much apreciate Open Source I am no extremist to say that all software should Open Sourced, no, the freedom of choise should allways be open, one is free to decide if he wants his source code to be available to the public or not. Of course the pressure of Open Source is tremendous, but no one should be forced to do a thing he does not consider right.

3)Yes tolerance is a very nice word, and so is equilibrium and freedom.

Thank you for leting me post I really enjoy a good conversation.

Pedro A.

An interesting article that discusses the situation can be found at Linux Today.

What vtiger is doing is insane. It is obvious their motivation is money and they don't have anything on their own to develop and contribute.

It is plain stealing....

I visited vtiger.com and the site doesn't have any information on the management. It looks like bunch of hackers (who don't have anythng do with CRM industry) stole open source code and make a living out of it.

If you see sugarecrm.com the management has many years of industry experience.

Thes kinds of action needs to be curtailed down as it kills the spirit of open software.

It is a wakup call for all of us as any rogue company from third world country can build parallel open source universe by taking other's work....

Hi again,

I didn't think this discussion was still up and running, but since it is here goes some more...

1) I guess everyone's motivation in business is money, so Sugar and Tiger are no different and they are in it for the cash.
I see that Tiger is selling service to a altered, yet legal version of Sugar (it is my believe so, I know others have other opinions).
Sugar is trying to sell the Pro version and service the OS version, and using the OS version to gather customers into the Pro version.

2) If you compare the newest Tiger version you will noticed that great improvements where made to the system (the kind of improvements that can not simply be stolen from Sugar) since they didn't exist in their initial release (Sugar's one), and still don't.
On the other hand Sugar didn't Open Source modules like Products that are so many times asked by the users.

3) Given the point above, my guess is that these (Tiger's) bunch of hackers do know the code, and I mean that in a definition of having knowledge and not only having received the code (aknowledge).
Sugar on the other hand is making an additional effort by opening sugarforge, still i can not see the current cvs code.

4) SugarCRM name is referenced in every Tiger application page (credit is indeed given, and this legacy is widely refered over Tigers site and easily searcheable on the forums too)

5) Sugar has added new features to their version 3, and so did Tiger in version 4.
And that's what competition is all about, users are all about to win, and both Sugar and Tiger will prevail if they keep up with users expectations.

6) Open Source, in my opinion, is not about who owns the code but who has knowledge over the code.
If Tiger were not up to it, the Sugar would win Tigers customers, because they would turn to Sugar for assistance if Tiger disappeared.
Sugar may end up by wining after all, there is this possibility.
Users just know the risks they are taking with Open Source and they are taking them with Tiger, why?
Are they insane too? I guess not.
Users do see both these projects running and compare their roadmaps, their activities, their forums, their TCO's and come to conclusions.

Apart from some censorship I have noticed in Sugars Forums (and I am surprised because I recently found out that I was not the only one to suffer from this, very sad really) I hope both projects keep alive and kicking, because they are a good example of great work.

Sugar's people could simply respect the situation they themselves created.
If they didn't want their code to be open, then they shouldn't have opened it in the first place, what's the matter now.
This kinda of fault seeking discussion is pointless and leads to nowhere.

Again I say I like both these systems and have made my own decision, others will choose otherwise and they are free to do so, and I sincerily add that I hope they keep being free to do so.

Pedro A.

Hi, I am Mani from vtiger. I noticed this discussion only now. Please visit vtiger, check out the code, to see just how much we have added, all 100% open source. SugarCRM, on the other hand, keeps all the "crown jewels", like Outlook etc. in "Professional Edition" (i.e not open source). That is their prerogative, but, don't you think a company that markets their open source so heavily should at least live by it? I hope you will check out the facts before posting something like this.

We are pained by this "third world" nonsense comments that appear. We have been attacked in racial terms before, and this comes close. Code is code, and vtiger has provided *substantial* open source contributions. If our third world country of origin precludes us from contributing, would this poster stop using 90% of software out there which contains contributions from third world origin engineers?

Mani

I'll admit i never had a prolem with vtiger forking sugarcrm initially, although i would have had they had done nothing with it but rebrand it. But as it turns out what they have done is secured a completely Opensource version to which they have now made massive advancements to. We like many are interested in the full workflows required by businesses, and the information stored in modern CRM applications provides the perfect foundation for developing a comlete business management application.

We've taken the approach of using sugar OS to date, but looking at vtiger now, and the extent to which it now supports order management on both the purchase and sale side of the equation is impressive and definitely heading in the right direction.

I cant imagine a business that stops its process at opportunities, we all need to go through quote, order invoice (and payments & financial settlement) or some simplified variation, so when an opensource crm application doesn't support these they are leaving a hole that we all have to fill.

And to recognise the previous efforts in this space, there are several opensource crm applications that provide almost the same functionality as sugar, in fact almost all crm apps look the same. I'm sure sugar looked at XRMS, browsercrm, centraview and the commercaial ones salesforce.com netsuite long and hard before they built their own.

While I'm just happy to get whats available anytime from OS, we certanly cant knock an OS provider whos filling those gaps for us all. Vtiger provides the Open source community the opportunity to build a the same functionality as what sugar will only provide at a price. And fair enough for sugar for charging, no probs there, but fair enough to vtiger, theres alot of additional opensource value coming our way.

I though Opensource was about collective power, about not re inventing the wheel, but speeding innovation, vtiger picked the best Opensource CRM application as their base for advancement, just isn't that the same sort of reusability you desire with dotproject?

Do you see a future market structure where people will still be buying and selling standalone applications for project management, crm, accounting, erp, ecommerce, websites... these spaces are converging around the customer.

And the customers requirement? Integrated softare for their integrated business.

How we get their? I hope its not a monolyth, but instead a smart integration of the best of breed, using apps like dotproject.

just some thoughts,

tim.

Could some one explain me with there was such a fuss about SugarCrm and Vtiger 9 months ago and now in August 05, all of a sudden the Opensource developpers of Mambo decide to kick out of the community with a new product (a fork) based on a stable version and you don't seem bothered !! . It's not relevant to know why the community of developpers left. The bottom line is that the intellectual property should have remained in Mamboserver's Foundation in Keith Casey point of view... but that's all right since in a "third world language" it means "all together" or "as a whole"

the community of developpers left

The Joomla/Mambo split actually came from within the Mambo community itself where key people such as Andrew Eddie and numerous others forked it.

The vTiger people took SugarCRM code - which they were not contributors to in any way, shape, or form - and made "their" own product.

That's the difference.

Folks, just look at when vTiger "forked" SugarCRM and think about why. They didn't participate or contribute to any SugarCRM project before they took (stole indeed) the entire code and made it as their own. Now they say they did it for the benefit of open source?? It is just a pathetic lie to cover their greedy soul.

For Joomla/Mambo, it is compltely understandable because developers and their community are the true owners of the project.

Hey Guys,
I like this conversation, and I would like to intervene as I've been testing both products, vTiger and Sugar.
Let me tell you my view of the situation:
1. Historicaly, SugarCRM makes an extraordinary nice effort to release an initial version of OS CRM.
2. vTiger sees the software, and they happily decide to work on it and add new features.
3. Then SugarCRM raises funds from venture investors, and suddenly, they have a master that needs profitability for the capital invested.
4. SugarCRM quits almost all resources from OS developement (that is something admited by them), and dedicates completely to the 'closed' products of their family.
5. Meanwhile, vTiger continues faitful to their principles, releasing all the new code in OS flavour.
6. At the end, looking at the product, SugarCRM OS becomes a 'demo' of the real product, with lack of security and lots of bugs on it (believe me, bugs the size of Texas).
7. SugarCRM sees vTiger a menace for their business, because they are giving for free a similar thing that Sugar wants to be paid for (the Pro version).

Some conclussions:
- Living out of OS Software in a capitalist world is difficult.
- May be is easier to live out of the service in India for the vTiger boys (where the cost of living is lower) than in California, where the Sugar boys live.
- Both options are valid. But in my opinion, it is more inmoral what the sugar guys are doing (using SugarCRM OS as a fishhook to push the people to the Pro version) than what the tiger guys do (using someone's OS code to improve it and leave as OS again).

Well, thats all my thoughs for now.
Jose

The simple logic of open source software is very simple.

You write an open source project because:

1. You are developer looking for recognition for your skillsets in a very large community.

2. You want to write a piece of software and want / need technical help and cannot afford it, financially.

3. You want to give back something that has aided you before ( OS software )

etc, etc, etc, ...

So, lets examine SugarCRM and vTiger based on the above reasons:

SugarCRM has their product and needed / desired help with the development ergo the made it open source. They received an immense amount of help ( for FREE ) from the community involved in open source ( developers and beta testers, etc. ) These folk perform this effort based on the fact they will always have the open source to utilize themselves a.k.a provide support services for it because they really understand it and therefore also promote the product to become a SF.net project of the month. SugarCRM at some point decides there product is ready for primetime and wants OUT of the OS sandbox to play in the commercial world. Their choice, which is fine by me.

vTiger comes along at some point in time, maybe they did not contribute code to the SugarCRM project maybe they did. Maybe they studied the code as beta testers or whatever. Maybe they got some clients to support for SugarCRM. SugarCRM goes commercial and their clients want the latest stuff but now they no longer have access to the source anymore. SugarCRM decided to cut off the feed of source for their personal gain. SugarCRM does not pay anyone for their time and effort in getting to that point, so in a nutshell they want the cake, the pan, the oven, and ALSO all proof the kitchen ever existed. They want to spin the clients of their supporters into their own and clain the potential revenues. Legal yes, shady?... definitely. SugarCRM played the OS game and then wanted out. vTiger simply said HEY! That is BS… you can go but you are leaving the source here ( in the OS world )

In short, vTiger upheld the Spirit of Open Source with respect to SugarCRM source base. In fact, it was SugarCRM that took the project off the OS radar. In the true spirit of the OS community SugarCRM should be very happy that their code lives on and is expanded its user base. In addition, if and when vTiger makes some monumental improvement to the source I bet $$$ that SugarCRM will grab the code and incorporate into its product under the radar.

With respect to copyright, I believe if you write:

For ( I = 1 to 100 )
Loop
End Loop

And then I write:

For ( J = 1 to 100 )
Loop
End Loop

Did I steal the copyright?

Just my thoughts.

Also, please note I like both products but actually use neither of them. I am involved in the OS community and the Commercial World as well. I like being involved in the OS community anonymously to gain more skills but obviously in the Commercial World I have a name and I believe that name is the American Programmer.

Thumbs up for vTiger! Code On!