Any legal issues to sell ERPNext as my product?

Can I update the ERPNext Logo,text and copyright with my company’s and sell it to my customer and buy a monitory consideration for it.Can i sell it as my product? Is there any legal issues for that?

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@neenusangeeth even before you consider legal implications, it is a foolish thing to do

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Why you tell it as a foolishness.Let me know?

If you read the blog, you’d realize that, if you were to rebrand ERPNext and sell it, chances are that your customers will find out the original project and you will lose credibility. A level of transparency is key when you’re selling something to someone.

Why not just sell ERPNext implementation / customization services?

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@neenusangeeth i agree with @rmehta and @vjFaLk. As a service provider we have started to build modules to add extra value to the product and also having a hosted version to sell to our customers. I would hate to see this project take the same road as odoo!

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We are not only going to plaster our brand name on ERPNext but we are going for customisation like adding more modules in it.Our thought is to change the ERPNext brand name to ours and clearly intimate the client as we had developed ERP on the top of ERPNext Open Source in our contract .We are also providing hosting,training,consulting,installation, setup and will quote extra money.Is it possible ?Is there any issue from your side?

from a legal stand point you are allowed to sell copies of the erpnext commercially, but only under the terms of the gpl v3. You will have to make the source code available to the users of the program as described in the gpl license, and they must be allowed to redistribute and modify it as described in the GPL v3. I think you should sell your service not the software. You can make a decent amount of money off of the hosting and services. If you have made advancement to the core of erpnext the you should share them back to the community.

You would also run into issues as ERPNext is updated

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as ERPNext is licensed GPL3 I think you might also need to read the license. It should all be in there.

I think tour question is a technical one rather then asking whether its anybody thinks it’s stupid or not.

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Thank you all for the immediate replies.

@neenusangeeth

All knows, If you re-brand, then you are not able to update ERPNext.

If your customer reports any issues to you, may be you can able to resolve it but again you need to do changes in core files to resolve issue.

After doing continuous changes, system will become in unmaintainable state. At that point you need to invest lots of money and time to reflector code.

ERPNext is developed on its own Framework Frappe, Any small mistake can lead to complete failure.
(Changing Frappe is like changing Source Code of Python/Java/Python Framework Django)

Some time we need to migrate from one server to another or restore database. To migrate system you need to maintain your own bench-repo with all dependency, frappe and erpnext. Before migrate you need to make sure both old and new server are at same point.

Even if you don’t want to re-brand after reading this post, you should not make any changes to core files.
To develop another module, one can creates it own app and write hooks method to apply business logic.
By separating customization in another app you are able to update system.
You can see lots of updates/fixed made to core files on daily basis Commits · frappe/frappe · GitHub

Regards,
Sambhaji Kolate

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Very good point of view.

We are in a similar situation.

We offer solutions which we call “OurVerticalSolution” based on ERPNext.

The “based on ERPNext” is a very important selling point, because the customer is aware, that he invests in a system, which is not built from 2 or 4 people garage, but which is supported by a worldwide community and has the potential to survive more than 10 or 20 years. The investment horizon for an ERP system is usually about 15, 20 years or more. So continuity and vendor independance is a very important sellingpoint. If you observe the commercial ERP market over the time, then you will see, that several commercial systems have disappeared from the scene. This can not happen with a good established opensource system.

If you sell only “OurVerticalSolution”. Then the customer may think, that he buys a system from a small garage company for big bugs, not knowing if the garage company will exist the next 10 or 20 years.

We keep the core untouched. This is our prime directive in development.

We only develop on App-Level.
The focus is keeping the ability to update the core. Most ERP systems on this planet have problems with this. Everyone knows the pain with Navision, SAP, Odoo and so far…

In Short words… Rebranding only while mentioning “based on ERPNext” and deleveloping only on App-Level, not touching the core and the frappe framework.

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I think instead of “based on ERPNEXT”, maybe “Powered by ERPNext” might give more credibility and also add prestige back to the project.

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Hello, how can I be your partner in the philippines? If possible, my company would love to have a joint venture for ERP next? I have an engineer who can customize the product, but we will not change the brand. can you give me at least 60% of the margin and authority to sell? My Company is Lite Technology Business Solutions Corp. executive@litetechnologycorp.com

Please write to us at partnerships@erpnext.com to take this conversation forward.

So i can create custom app connected with erpnext app and put it into my cloud server and ask users for monthly fees without share source code ?