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YetiForceCompany / YetiForceCRM

Our team created for you one of the most innovative CRM systems that supports mainly business processes and allows for customization according to your needs. Be ahead of your competition and implement YetiForce!
https://yetiforce.com
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Confused In multiple licensing. #12480

Closed uttamsharma closed 4 years ago

uttamsharma commented 4 years ago

Hello, first of all thanks for this nice CRM. Actually I'm confused in your licensing terms. Somewhere it's similar to MIT somewhere it's GPL or yetiforce licence. Actually I want to modify this Great CRM for my cloud application. I just want to ask is it allowed to do the following tasks.

Thanks for this really great product. Expecting a reply soon. THANKS

waistracloud commented 4 years ago

Yes licensing is confusing, Cant understand what can do or don't. Installation wizard shows a License Similar to MIT. But multiple licensing info on yetiforce website and MIT license on GitHub repository.

waistracloud commented 4 years ago

https://github.com/YetiForceCompany/YetiForceCRM/issues/5337 Read the following thread may be it can help you. I think you can change the name, Place your logo, Modify, Redistribute. Only two limitations Not remove the footer, Share the data of users with yetiforce. @uttamsharma . It'll be great if a project contributor will explain your issue.

uttamsharma commented 4 years ago

This thread is helpful but still not clear about my doubts. In a more simple way, iwant to ask. I want to do minor changes in yetiforce and give it a different name. Like suiteCRM, vtiger build a CRM on the core of sugerCRM. (I know it's big thing, is used it just for an example) I want to build a CRM on the core of Yetiforce (only few minor changes).

Expecting a reply from project contributor.

uttamsharma commented 4 years ago

@paula-w may you please on this issue?

paula-w commented 4 years ago

This is @bpabiszczak’s response:

@uttamsharma you want us to provide you with information that you should receive from your lawyer. What I’m going to say is not any kind of declaration or statement from us, the legal risk of creating a new system is something you have to assess on your own. Licensing is a very complicated subject, you have to take into consideration ALL the licenses in the system! Currently there are several different licenses in the system (YetiForce has its own license but it uses more than 140 libraries that are released under different licenses). Right now you can find such licenses as:

You must understand all the licenses that are in the application, know their limits and what to pay attention to when using code under these licenses. If a license is not good for your project, then you have to use a different one, sometimes it’s simple and sometimes complicated. From the list above, you should be particularly interested in LGPL licenses because copyleft sometimes applies to them. The system itself doesn’t have any GPL libraries (if this were the case, the entire application would have to be under GPL). That is why Roundcube is not distributed together with YetiForce (you can add it as a library) because it is under a copyleft license - in the nearest future roundcube will be completely removed from the library list. There is a huge difference between the GPL and LGPL licenses as well as between the different versions of these libraries, you should keep this in mind! If you install YetiForce, then in the configuration panel you have a list of all libraries and their licenses used in the application:

Our license forbids you from removing the footer (it must remain as it is) and each version of the application must be registered with us with the real data of the company that will use the system. You can change the installer, login panel, configuration panel and add your new name there, but you can't delete our data and our name from the footer (so you can't really get rid of YetiForce). Our license is ideal for companies that want unlimited access to the source code and want to freely develop the application, however, it is not good for someone who wants to offer the product under their own name, due to these two points described above.

You would be better off picking Vtiger because their license doesn’t include the two conditions I mentioned (that’s why we forked it). We wouldn’t recommend forking SuiteCRM because it’s a licensing disaster (see: https://github.com/salesagility/SuiteCRM/issues/5374)

We sometimes allow our corporate customers to change the YFPL license to a license without these two conditions (e.g. when a bank employing 10,000 employees wants to have their own footer instead of ours), then for an additional fee we allow them to do this (but these are really high costs, so we wouldn’t advise that to small and medium-sized companies). Small and medium-sized companies can take advantage of the option of disabling our branding and substitute it with their own. In this case only a few pieces of information about us remain in the footer, while links and buttons direct to the client's own pages - this solution is ok for 99% of the clients we work with.

uttamsharma commented 4 years ago

I loved the way you described the complete scenario. Thanks for your quick reply. Just a one more question. I know it's on the wrong forum. But if you can explain this it'll be a great help. I'm considering your suggestion for forking vtiger. As the both vtiger and suite is fork of suger CRM. What are the requirements for forking vtiger. Is the vtiger crm's licence allow the following things to do. Thanks for your response. @paula-w

mariuszkrzaczkowski commented 4 years ago

Our license forbids you from removing the footer (it must remain as it is) and each version of the application must be registered with us with the real data of the company that will use the system.

I will just add that the CRM has to be registered for the company that uses the system and also for the company that deployed it, and the company that integrates it with 3rd party services.

see the registration window, this is the field

image

paula-w commented 4 years ago

Once again, @bpabiszczak's response:

We forked Vtiger, but you have to ask your lawyer about the licensing details, that’s the least risky solution for you.

Vtiger forked Sugar in 2004, back then Sugar’s license was different, it used to be what Vtiger’s license is now. It was SPL 1.1.2, it’s the same license as Vtiger’s current license, VPL, and MPL - and they are all very good licenses, they let you fork the software and are business friendly.

Later versions of Sugar introduced one of the worst licenses - AGPL - SuiteCRM inherited this license from them. Some companies forbid using any software released under AGPL.

uttamsharma commented 4 years ago

Thanks for your response @paula-w