Is Alfresco a real Open Source?

[edless]

Certified Alfresco Partners only offer Level 1 Support, Consulting, Integration or Training on either the Alfresco Enterprise.

Open source was born to give people the possibility to share knowledge and expertise.

Why Alfresco is giving just to big company the possibility to be supported  on the product? Why I can't pay a Alfresco Partner just to support me on a community version, without asking any guaranty?

ED

[joel_moore]

Forgive a naive question but how can the source code the the EE be closed if the LE is open?  It sounds like the EE is based on the GPL'd LE so doesn't that mean the source code has to be made available?

In any case my initial excitement over this product has been dampened by the $16k/year price hinted at in this thread (I wish you'd just list the price on your website rather than forcing me to ask you for it…I could have saved a lot of time).  There's absolutely no way our little company is going to be able to justify such a cost for something like this, no matter how compelling the features are.

I guess document management systems just aren't meant for the small guy.

[janvg]

We've been using the community edition (I prefer this name over Lab, since Lab sounds too much like testing and bugs…) for two years now on a project with 300 users and we never had problems.

We recently decided to switch to an enterprise edition for different reasons :

-Scaling : we want to open the project to 3000 users instead of 300, performance issues might become important
- The project becomes more business critical
- the setup became more complex (LDAP integration, webservices integration…)
- We started to invest in or own customization
…

For this we are willing to pay for it as a kind of "security investment", not only as a support but also as a guarantuee that Alfresco will survice, and will keep on investing in new features and stabilizing the application. It is for our own interest too. We spend more money on setting up the new server (analyses, promotion, configuration, monitoring , security) as on the licence fee,  which turns out to be only one third of the total cost of ownership for a professional Alfresco setup. 

After following this discussion from the beginning I have a strong feeling that there is a lot of confusion…  and I do believe the Lab-naming is at the basis of this confusion.

It sounds like Lab users are just test users ,that you can not trust this version in production, that if there is something better if you pay for it …

We don't have this experience. The community version did the job pretty fine and if you are a small organisation and don't need a complex setup and integration I can only encourage you to go for it. But if Alfresco becomes critical for your business, I think it's a wise investment to pay for the enterprise. As I said before, not only for the technical support but mainly for the savegarding of the other investments a ECMS take to work not only now, but also for the future.

[vsuarez]

Forgive a naive question but how can the source code the the EE be closed if the LE is open?  It sounds like the EE is based on the GPL'd LE so doesn't that mean the source code has to be made available?

Alfresco is the owner/proprietary of the product, so they (Alfresco people) can close (or not to open) what they want.

Firstly I want to say that I do appreciate Luis interest in questions formulated by the forumers. He is trying to defend the Alfresco position about open source with arguments and data while others don't.

And then my question: if I buy a EE licence, can I see and modify the source code of that product?

Regards

[joel_moore]

Forgive a naive question but how can the source code the the EE be closed if the LE is open?  It sounds like the EE is based on the GPL'd LE so doesn't that mean the source code has to be made available?

Alfresco is the owner/proprietary of the product, so they (Alfresco people) can close (or not to open) what they want.

Well my understanding is that's not how the GPL works.  But whatever.  I'm not some GPL champion here.

edit: It's not my intent to continue stirring up the hornet's nest here.  GPL compliance is a complex topic that I'm sure Alfresco has a better handle on than I do.  And I certainly don't begrudge them for wanting to make money off their product.  If it does everything it seems to claim it does then they deserve to get wealthy off it.

[vsuarez]

Thank you very much Luis for your response. I'd like to add some comments.

Howdy guys,

Absolutely yes! Alfresco Enterprise customers get access to the Enterprise BRANCH on our source control system. That lets them access the specific build-files and SVN TAGS/revisions so that they could compile their own binary. That code is still very much 100% open source GPL because it ALREADY EXISTS in the public Alfresco Labs SVN.

But the code is only GPLed after it is merged into Community/Labs edition. If EE version were GPL, I could buy a licence and then publish the patches and bugfixes into a new Alfresco 2.1.5 Community Edition. EE is something like Microsoft Shared Source licences: you can view but you can not touch. Well, you actually can touch but you can not improve the Community Edition with that code. I reckon this is better than nothing.

There is no requirement for us to publish how we chose to compile the public source code in order to create an Enterprise build. This is what Red Hat and MySQL have done to protect their business and provide value to their paying customers. And yes, there's no denying that it's a business decision. It goes back to the idea I've discussed before, Alfresco needs to exist as a company and there have to be a small number of customers willing to pay for the software and support in order to continue funding its development so that we may provide Alfresco Labs to the community at-large.

Well, that is not exactly correct:

• Red Hat does not own the Linux, so they must publish all the changes and improvements made, because of that we have CentOS (exactly the same product with all its features and bugfixes).


• I think MySQL offers exactly the same DBRMS to community and to its paying customers. Paying customers takes advantage of a professional support besides with some modules not GPLed, but the core is the same.


• Red Hat JBoss (owners of the code) offers the same application server to paying customers and to community. Professional services are paid.


• Both companies release beta products where community collaborate, tests and sends patches, and these patches are committed to an accessible branch for the same version, not for a very future version.

The last point is the most important for me. If I send a patch or spend my time testing an unfinished product, I want this patch or knowledge available to everyone, or at least, available in the next version I will download (available for me). I think the community will tender to be tired to collaborate for stabilizing the paying version of Alfresco.

Regards,
Victor

[bastian]

Now if I understand the Licensing policy right it says that you can, if you purchased the commercial version, get the source code and use it to release it under a license (maybe a commercial one) of your choice!? This can be compared to the way MySQL handles the licensing. I personally like this kind of licensing and i actually think its quite fair. Those who don't want to release their software under the gpl are not forced to do so and those who want to can do it for free …

[vsuarez]

Tanks again, Luis!

That is incorrect… The Enterprise code is 100% GPL, you are free to release it to the entire world if you desire… Because we own the copyright for 100% of the core Alfresco code, we can do something that Red Hat and others can't do. We make paying customers exempt from releasing any modifications as open source/GPL code unless they desire it!

Excuse me, but I was previously said in other thread that EE was not licensed under GPL. So if you are correct, that means the community could collect founds, get an EE license and release all the patches applied to 2.1.x EE editions of Alfresco, as CentOS people did. I think this could be even of interest for partners, so they can sell a cheaper support over a stable edition of Alfresco Community/Labs (they won't support an instable version of the product), meanwhile paying customers always will pay for high level of support. Last is a mere opinion.

Now, it would be good to know if there would be sufficient support of this idea by the community side.

PD: JBoss owns the copyright for 100% of its server code, and they don't make differences between paying customers releases and community releases. Furthermore, Red Hat collaborates and helps in various open source projects and technologies that they use in their products. Does this type of feedback exist in Alfresco?

[jsant]

Just to get the facts straight about JBoss' support offerings..

JBoss owns the copyright for 100% of its server code, and they don't make differences between paying customers releases and community releases.

In fact, JBoss does differentiate between paying customer releases and community releases. Here's a blurb from their site:

JBoss Product Update and Support Offering
(http://www.jboss.com/products/updates)

…as of August 1st, 2008, … we will no longer provide support for JBoss.org community projects as part of your JBoss Enterprise Middleware subscription; only software obtained from the JBoss Customer Support Portal will be supported, as noted in the subscription support agreement. This August 1st deadline is applicable in particular for community-supported JBoss.org projects such as Application Server 4.2 and above.

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) is the supported upstream product based on the jboss.org project: JBoss Application Server.  You can not buy support for JBoss Application Server, only for "enterprise level" JBoss EAP product.  This is JBoss' usage of the Fedora/RHEL model. A better explanation is given in the JBoss EAP FAQ (http://www.jboss.com/products/platforms/application/faqs).

[vsuarez]

In fact, JBoss does differentiate between paying customer releases and community releases. Here's a blurb from their site:

Sorry, you are right, my mistake. But I have to say that anyone can build by him/her self any version of the supported versions because all the repository branches are available, not only head (and there are a lot of them). Besides that they mark as "stable" their JBoss AS (GA), and as "beta" the future versions, and both versions evolve simultaneously (JBoss 5 has not avoided the improvement of JBoss 4.2.x community branch).

Regards,
Víctor

[stevewickii]

From the day we searched for a FREE open source solution for our client, you had us believe that you offered a free open source product called Community Network.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060209024643/www.alfresco.com/products/

Alfresco Community Network
The Alfresco Community Network is designed for developer�s to have access to the latest Enterprise Content Management technology. It is a freely downloadable version of the leading open source Enterprise Content Management system. It is supported by a huge and active community of open source developers – free.

To say I am at fault for expecting free software when it clearly states at http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

2. Source Code
The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.

We wouldn't have even considered Alfresco had we know that there was not a stable version of the open source product.

I am happy to hear that you intend to create branches within the open source code base, to separate stable and unstable streams of development.

Drupal didn't have the benefit of a company to back it until Acquia was formed and guess what? Acquia just released what amounts to be an "enterprise" and supported version of Drupal. That's analogous to Alfresco Enterprise. It took them longer to get to where we are, but that's only because until early this year, Dries Buytaert was a PhD student. Now that he's out of school, he needs to put food on his table and the best way for him to do it was to start a company around Drupal… That's capitalism at work!

It is only by charging for support and services that Dreis can hire engineers and continue to improve upon Drupal so that EVERYONE, whether they pay him or not, can continue to benefit from improvements to Drupal Core and Acquia Drupal.
]

Acquia does not charge for their product.  They charge for their support, implementation and training services, as you had us believe when we selected Alfresco.
http://acquia.com/products-services/acquia-drupal

Acquia Drupal is GPL licensed - freely available for download and use. Acquia Drupal includes modules from a number of sources: Drupal community contributed modules, Drupal 6.x core and Acquia.

As for the statement about Alfresco following the MyEclipse business model.  My Eclipse clearly states that their product is ShareWare, and not Open Source.
http://www.google.com/search?q=myeclipse&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&start...

MyEclipse :: Eclipse plugin development tools for Java, JSP, XML …
A Eclipse-based J2EE development platform. [Shareware]

Final word about the price, just to keep info straight here.  We were not quoted $16,000.   It is $16,000 per CPU, per year.  The price you quoted us, for our lowest scale server, which is a 4 cpu linux server, was $30,000 per year.