Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » Alfresco goes 100% GPL

February 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Alfresco goes 100% GPL

TAGS: Open Source

Today Alfresco announced that it has gone 100% GPL. As you might imagine, I'm ecstatic about the move (and have been working toward this since I joined Alfresco in 2005). Actually, I think it would be fair to say that everyone in the company is ecstatic about the move. It makes things easier for marketing, for engineering, and for sales. (Gasp! Did he really say "GPL" and "sales" in the same paragraph? :-)

As CNET has covered, this move is in part designed to help expand our already healthy community. But it's also about driving a stake into the heart of our outdated, expensive, proprietary competitors, as John Powell, Alfresco's CEO states:

Moving Alfresco under the GPL makes a tough battle even tougher for those companies still shackled by proprietary licenses designed to control
customers instead of empower them. Alfresco is by far the leading brand when people think of open source ECM and the move to GPL will accelerate that adoption across the development, OEM and customer communities.

If you're an open source company, think about the power of giving your software away. How can a Cognos or Business Objects respond to a more innovative JasperSoft, which just so happens to be free? Or a Oracle or Salesforce.com respond to a more innovative SugarCRM, which just so happens to be a free download away?

They can't. That's the power that Alfresco is tapping into, especially since we've made the entire product GPL. You can spend a million dollars with Documentum. Or you can download Alfresco (and get a product that is lightyears faster, dramatically easier to use, has a common repository across Web Content Management, Records Management, Document Management, Imaging, etc.

Oh, and it's free, too.

This is what open source business is all about. Significantly benefiting customers and the development community while cutting your Stone Age proprietary competitors off at the knees.

This doesn't mean, by the way, that interoperability with the proprietary world doesn't matter. Of course it does. We've actually worked closely with Microsoft to enable tight SQL Server/Windows/Office integration. (And Sam and Bill and their team has been fantastic to work with. These guys understand that Microsoft thrives so long as its ecosystem thrives, and they're helping to make that happen.) No, a move to 100% open source means a laser-sharp focus on customers, and integration with the software they already have matters a great deal.

The battle, instead, is for all the software they still need. Open source helps to ensure you win that battle.

As the Alfresco FAQ states:

Alfresco feels strongly that the future of software is open source. Not a little open source mixed with a lot of proprietary source. Free and open source software. It is open source, not hybrid models that will drive true disruption in the software industry, with greater value created for and by end-users.

The GNU General Public License (“GPL”) is the ideal license to drive forward this industry disruption. The GPL ensures that no vendor – including Alfresco – can control a customer’s content. The GPL also provides the maximum assurance that the open source community and not, ultimately, Alfresco, protects investments in our code.

We plan to be in business for a long time, but wanted a license that guarantees our users that Alfresco, the code, will always be bigger and more enduring than Alfresco, the company. This enables our community to invest in the Alfresco code with maximum confidence that the investment will grow over time, and not be wasted.

You can find the FAQ here, which answers a lot of the questions customers, partners, and competitors may have about the move. The white paper describing Alfresco's licensing strategy is here.

Like MySQL, Alfresco is licensing its software under the GPL with a FLOSS Exception. We strongly endorse and promote the GPL but also wanted to broaden the tent to allow other open source projects to integrate with Alfresco without necessarily having to go GPL themselves (however much we may want them to do so).

This move is about choice, in other words. Choice for our customers (Freedom of access to the world's best content management system). Choice for our partners. Choice for our competitors (join us or get run over :-). Choice for the community.

And, lest you didn't grok my point above, this is also about making money. The GPL is open source's best business license. It is open source capitalism - the free market at its finest.

Freedom pays great dividends.

I want to extend a HUGE thank you to Heather Meeker of Greenberg Traurig LLP, our IP attorney, who did a fantastic job assisting us in making this change. She may have become tired of seeing my number pop up on her caller ID, but she never showed it. Instead, she offered exceptional legal counsel, and I'd recommend her to anyone looking for an expert in open source and intellectual property, generally.

[Truth in advertising: I work for Alfresco and think that the proprietary software companies we compete with have a limited shelf life. :-) ]

Posted by Matt Asay on February 22, 2007 10:07 AM

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