Open Source Blog

Centric’s EVP and CMO, Michael Harvey, wrote:

“We truly believe in our product, team and product strategy. We have never misled or mis-communicated the license that our software is based on. Our current license is not OSI-approved, nor have we ever claimed it is. But it is open source. Our software is developed and supported by an online community open to all; ships with full source code and grants customers the freedom to modify their software or any part of it for internal use; and is available for unlimited use, free of charge, by anyone who visits our website.”

As I previously noted, the Centric Public License falls short of the OSI-approval test, not least because it does not allow for redistribution, either of the core code, or derivatives.

It seems the company has already been thinking about its licensing options, however. “That said, I am delighted to confirm that we've been exploring our licensing for some time,” adds Harvey. “Next week our next major product, Centric Team Elements, will be released under the Open Software License (OSL 3.0), an OSI-approved license.

“In addition, we are putting out a Centric CRM SDK under the LGPL that will allow third parties to freely redistribute and build derivative works based on our public API. We are also making our Microsoft Outlook plug-in available under the GPL so that third-parties can extend our plug-in capabilities to their products.”

While Centric CRM disagrees with the OSI about whether it should use the term “open source” it is, like SocialText, moving in the right direction.

“In the spirit of open source, I would welcome the chance to meet with interested parties, fellow vendors such as Sugar CRM and Michael Tiemann, President of the OSI, to discuss this issue,” added Harvey.