Hi,

Thanks for pointing out this important change.

Yes licence hase changes from GPL to AGPL in V6.0. We will explain in next days why we did it.
What is important to understand is the change it brings :
if you just use ProjeQtOr without changing it : it changes nothing
if you develop some changes and deploy it to customers : it changes nothing (you still need to deploy changes under same licence)
if you develop some changes to provide a service to customers : then you now need to provide source code to your customers (it is the only difference between GPL and AGPL)
if you develop some changes for your own needs (inside your organization) : it changes nothing, you can keep your code for yourself.

Hope this is more clean.

What made us change the licence to AGPL
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.en.html

(in french : https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html)

You're right, I missed the part where "code source must be released to the users", not necessarly to everybody in the world. But it also means that if you make some developments for your organization, you have to make the source code available to every user of the organization, which is not what I understand from your comment.
It's more clear anyway, thank you.

Yes, I know what the AGPLv3 does, as I use it for some little projects, and that's why I started this topic when I saw this change. It fixes the "privacy loophole", but that's not the only licence doing it. For example, the Common Public Attribution License 1.0 does the same, but modules (or plugins) of the original work can be licenced under whatever the developer want.

But it also means that if you make some developments for your organization, you have to make the source code available to every user of the organization,.

Yes, in the idea of the licence, and to be able to spead licence to SaaS services, it is written this way.
But sure we will never have a look at your own servers if your service is inside your organization. 😉
What we really want to force is the redistribution of code to "customers" in all cases, even if ProjeQtOr code is used in SaaS mode.

Common Public Attribution License

Thanks for the information.
I don't really see differences with AGPL in wikipedia explanation, and maybe we'll have to explore this licence description.

Really what we want with the licence, and try to do with AGPL is :
- give freedom to users to use and modify code
- force distribution to "customers" to be "viral", under same licence, so that changes can benefit to the community, even if distribution is done through a service (SaaS mode)
- keep opportunity to organizations to change code to own needs without having to redistribute it to community as long as use is internal to the organization (for instance for specific need and possibly for security reason as some coding may include confidential information)

Hope this is more clear.
Thread is open to everyone to give his own point of view.
Thanks.

You can see a summary of differences between these two licenses here: http://oss-watch.ac.uk/apps/licdiff/

AGPL
1. Popular and widely used: No
2. Licence type: Strong copyleft
3. Jurisdiction: Not specified
4.a Grants patent rights: Yes
4.b Patent retaliation clause: Yes
5. Specifies enhanced attribution: Yes
6. Addresses privacy loophole: Yes
7. Includes 'no promotion' feature: Yes

Common Public Attribution License 1.0
1. Popular and widely used: No
2. Licence type: Weak copyleft
3. Jurisdiction: Specified: Northern District of California, US
4.a Grants patent rights: Yes
4.b Patent retaliation clause: Yes
5. Specifies enhanced attribution: Yes
6. Addresses privacy loophole: Yes
7. Includes 'no promotion' feature: Yes

So the main difference is the license type which allows you - for example - to distribute your paid plugins under proprietary licence if you want with CPAL. With AGPL, you will need to distribute them under AGPLv3 (same license) 😉

Hello,

The license matter is always very interesting, and I have some questions:
1) Plugins must be distributed with the same license
So, I wonder why some of the plugins are available for a fee - not that I want everything to be free - just that it seems to me that the AGPL for v6,x makes all plugins to be under the same license or I am missing something.
Especially the point that is limiting the use of the plugin for only one installation per paid license appears to be weird in that context.

2) Database information, data and parameters are not part of the source code
I understand that "source modification does not include the data, neither the parameters, stored in the DB."
Am I right?

3) Users are not the public
AGPL requires that source code should be available to users, in a SaaS mode, users are customers, so the source code is available to the customers but not to the general public.
Is my understanding correct?

4) What I intend to do:
As a freelancer, I give support to my customer to conceive, manage and deploy organizational and IT projects.
I plan to add projeQtor to my toolbox kit as a saas.
I may provide the service for a fee, but only to my customers: my platform is not made for a "standalone" service.
Most of my "intelligence" is about setting up the parameters, developing a progressive approach for the project.
It may add some code modification - so far it was the "hidden fields".
I have no problem giving the modification of the projector source code.
What about the use of others API, with cron jobs: is that considered to be a modification of the source code?

I want to make sure that my use feels with your Philosophy and that everyone is going to be happy 🙂
Thanks for your attention.

Kitcat711

All plugins, and all code provided by third parties may be under AGPL Licence, you are right.

But owner of the licence(SAS ProjeQtOr) may pluplish some parts not in the same licence.
It is the same kind of distribution as for Premium / Open source : you can get the free Open Source product, but the full one (Premium) is not open source any more.
In fact, to understand better, you may consider that the whole projeqtor perimeter (Projeqtor main code + plugins + documentation + ...) is premium, not free, private, owned by SAS ProjeQtOr, and owner decided to publish some part (Projeqtor main code) in open source mode.

Especially the point that is limiting the use of the plugin for only one installation per paid license appears to be weird in that context.

This a only way to build a Business model that will garantee thet the product will be maintained and improved for long.

I understand that "source modification does not include the data, neither the parameters, stored in the DB."
Am I right?

Of cource not !!!
You don't have to publish your data under AGPL licence.
Only scripts that build the database are part of the licence, not its result.

AGPL requires that source code should be available to users, in a SaaS mode, users are customers, so the source code is available to the customers but not to the general public.

In AGPL, source code must be provided to Users in AGPL mode, so that Users may then provide code to the general public.
This is designed so that any improvment done on code from projeqtor may get back to projeqtor code.

As a freelancer, I give support to my customer to conceive, manage and deploy organizational and IT projects.
I plan to add projeQtor to my toolbox kit as a saas.
I may provide the service for a fee, but only to my customers: my platform is not made for a "standalone" service.
Most of my "intelligence" is about setting up the parameters, developing a progressive approach for the project.
It may add some code modification - so far it was the "hidden fields".
I have no problem giving the modification of the projector source code.
What about the use of others API, with cron jobs: is that considered to be a modification of the source code?

What you intend to do seems to fit the licence, as long as you provide the code to your customers, that will possibily reverse it to the community.
The best, in the idea of open source, is that you may reverse code yourself to the community, if it has some "common" interest.
Using external APIs from ProjeQtOr needs to code some parts in projeqor code so is concidered as modification of source code.
Using projeqtor API from external programs is not modification of code (it is only use of code, and possibly modification of data)

Thank you for the explanations.
So using and contributing to improve the Open Source app is under risk for the "public" : the owner can change the license distribution at any time.
Leaving users, including the "B" in the middle (BtoBtoB) in a stressful situation?

Thank you for the explanations.
So using and contributing to improve the Open Source app is under risk for the "public" : the owner can change the license distribution at any time.
Leaving users, including the "B" in the middle (BtoBtoB) in a stressful situation?

hi
Only owner of original product licence (in our case it means SAS PROJEQTOR) can change licencing.
But it is right SAS PROJEQTOR has the right to change licence ... for future versions. All previous versions already released in AGPL will keep using this licence. There is no reverse effect possible.
We can reassure you : it is abso'utely not what we intend to do. We really believe in open source and will keep going this way as long as we are independant. This will continue as long as users understand that to survive enterprise needs incomes. This is through our services and plugins that we'll generate enough incomes to survive and keep improving projeqtor.
To finish, even if one day licence would change, any community user would have the right to fork last open source version to build new open source project (think about Maria DB for instance...)