Who can change the ERPNext license?

ERPNext
1

I am considering deploying ERPNext for our company. The Nature of being OpenSource is a key feature for this. I understand ERPNext being GPL3 currently. From experience of other projects I think it’s pretty important to understand how this license could be changed in the future.

So my questions would be:

  1. who can decide about a license change of ERPNext?
  2. is there any way to get a vote in such a decision as a user (meaning a vote, not just discussing)?
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This is answered here License of Frappe or ERPNext - #2 by rmehta

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@vrms There is no intention of changing the license as of now.

We are also in the process of establishing a non-profit foundation to take over the governance of the project in a true Open Source manner.

4

thanks for your feedback

even tough that sounds good it does not quite answer my question. My question was IF anyone in control changed it’s mind (due to whatever reason) and WANTED to change the license. COULD this just be done just like that? Don’t get me wrong I do not doubt anybodies good intentions but I’d like to understand this in all detail.

now that really sounds interesting. Can you tell us more? Like how that will be organized and who is in control. I have no real idea how a foundation actually works so please excuse whether these are a little naive question maybe.

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You would have to look up the GPL License conditions (not an expert either!) for what would the exact process be like for someone changing the license. The copyright for the code is shared by individual contributors, so I guess it would involve some co-ordination.

I understand where you come from though. History has shown that all ERPs that started as open source have slowly become closed.

I think the key difference between ERPNext and the past is that

  1. ERPNext does not depend on the partner ecosystem to sustain itself. For e.g. as per last year 80%+ revenues for Odoo were from the partner community. ERPNext is self sustaining by the erpnext.com cloud.
  2. There is no venture funding involved.

Though this is no guarantee that greed will not overcome the ERPnext core team (Frappé - us) but there are structural differences that may prevent any major change in philosophy.

Beyond that its a judgement call! I guess you can hang around in the community and see for yourself.

We will have to see. I guess there should be a list of core values and goals and then governance should be a mix between doers and sponsors, with a rotation between office bearers. We are still pretty early stage to do this, but that is the general direction!

Hope this helped!

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