Re: recommendations for CRM/Sales Force Automation/Contact Mgmt software?

2008/10/22 Douglas Handy <dhandy@xxxxxxxxx>:

All:

If your box is at least V5R4 (although V5R3 is possible but not as easy),

I would suggest loading Zend PHP and MySQL and using SugarCRM. It's free.
It's open source. And it runs great on IBM i. ...

I always try open source software first. Since there is no cost involved,
there is no reason not to. Plus, IT can become real heroes to the company
when you can deliver this kind of functionality quickly and at little to
no cost.

SugarCRM looks interesting, but in terms of "no reason not to" try open
source software first, what is the effect of the OSS license requirements if
/ when you make your own private modifications or extensions? As I
interpret their license, I know that if you distribute or "make the software
available" to third parties you must make the modified source available as
well. But in that context, does making the software available refer to end
users of your own installation, or just distributing the modified software
to run at another installation?

Hi Doug

Sugar CRM uses the GPLv3 license for the OSS Community Edition and
from the GPL FAQ at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#InternalDistribution it says
installing within one organization doesn't constitute distribution so
you don't need to make the modified source available. If you supply it
to contractors for use off site then you do.

Some projects use the Affero GPL - http://www.affero.org/ - which is a
twist on the GPL that requires the source to be made available to
users of web services provided by the software. That's something that
the GPL on its own doesn't provide for.

Regards, Martin