FAQ about Jahia edtions and commercial open source

Answers

  • What is Commercial Open Source?


    Commercial Open Source (COS) is based on the value Open Source software delivers to corporate buyers and the realization that existing commercial ECMS and CORPORATE PORTAL applications are overpriced relative to the actual engineering dollars required to build these applications. The Commercial Open source model allows Jahia to offer:

    Greater Innovation
    By nature, open source product development is a Darwinian process, where only the most useful features and products merit the time and attention of the open source community. This "survival of the fittest" approach differs greatly from the development model of proprietary software vendors, where a group of engineers guess and then build features they think users across a variety of businesses, industries and geographies might want. By contrast, Commercial Open Source (COS) captures the feedback of thousands of the world's best developers; leading to more frequent improvements of an application that fits the demands of individual businesses worldwide.

    Better Quality
    COS reveals 100 percent of its source code to developers, allowing the open source community to test and fix any problems or bugs within the application - a radical departure from the world of closed vendors. COS producers believe that using business applications and software in general does not have to be an unpleasant experience. If the software is not meeting customer demands, users should not have to wait for another product development cycle or patch release to fix the problem.

    Less Risk
    Too many companies have paid too much money and then watched as employees failed to adopt a new ECMS or PORTAL system. The problem: people were forced to adapt to the application, not the other way around. The COS development process places customization and usability at the forefront. A fun, friendly and usable application increases user adoption, improves employee productivity and provides the visibility executives need to make their business successful.

    Faster Payback
    COS systems offers lower upfront, implementation, customization and maintenance costs than proprietary ECMS or PORTAL systems because of the way the software is manufactured. By leveraging the expertise of developers worldwide, COS vendors deliver a better product at lower cost. Thus, customers can measure their return on investment in months, if not weeks; instead of years or, in some cases, never.

     
  • What are your product editions and prices?
    We have 2 products lines: Jahia Community Edition is our open source product which can be freely downloaded and used. Jahia Commercial Editions (Professional and Standard Editions) offer necessary  Enterprise-ready functionality and deployment capabilities. To learn more about the differences between our editions, click here.
     
  • How do I purchase Jahia products?
    Once you decide what deployment option fits your company best you can purchase directly from Jahia, Ltd (sales@jahia.com). or through an authorized reseller. To find a reseller in your area, click here.
     
  • Can I migrate between the different Editions of Jahia?

    Yes. We use the same distribution for all the editions. Certain features are only turned off and you will just need to ask for and modify your license key in order to change your current Jahia Edition. Please just contact us at license@jahia.org in order to get a new trial key or at sales@jahia.com if you want to buy a commercial editions of Jahia or extend your current Jahia commercial edition.

     
  • What is the Jahia Common Development and Distribution License (JCDDL)?
    The open source version of Jahia (Jahia community Edition) is relased under the JCDDL license, a derivation of the open source CDDL license which is itself based on the Mozilla Public License.
     
  • What is the Jahia Sustainable Software License (JSSL)?
    Basically the JSSL is a fair and sustainable commercial software license (cf: wwww.sustainablesoftware.info) whose major objectives are:
    - Free access to the source code for Research and Development Use
    - Free possible redistribution for Research and Development Use
    - Royalty for any Internal Deployment and/or Commercial Use
    - Reduction or suppression of royalties in exchange of a code counterpart

    The goal is to "tax" passive users of the technology and to allow license payments in kind for active contributors ("quid pro quo" license).

    Usually the ratio of contributors to complaining onlookers decreases as project size increases. We found that, generally speaking, a healthy open source project has:
    - a core team with a few (5-10) project leaders
    - about 10x as many code contributors as leaders
    - about 10x as many contributors (mailing list discussants and bug reporters) as code contributors
    - about 10x as many lurkers as contributors
    - about 10x as many users (people who download the product) as lurkers
    - about 10x as many visitors to the site as actual users
    The interesting thing with the JSSL license is that we try to push the "pyramid of participation" towards the top and to accelerate promotion in the hierarchy by enforcing a "contribute or pay" paradigm.
     
  • Which portions of the Software is available under the JSSL?

    The Jahia core framework is available under an Open Source license (JCDDL). Extensions such as versioning, multilanguage support, Single-sign-on, LDAP connectors, clustering capabalities, etc... are only available in the commercial editions of Jahia (full source code also included under a more restrictive sustainable license).

     
  • What is the Approved Couterpart Agreement in the attachment C of the JSSL?
    The basic idea behind this attachment is that current open source licenses have no way to encourage value added contributors and to tax technology free-riders.

    At the basis, we were discussing on the mechanism behind the Internet: everybody pays a small piece of connexion and agree to transfer and carry someone else data. So you can pay only local calls even if you are in relation with another country. We wanted the same for our open source project. Those that contribute to the development of the Technology can use it for free or with substantial discounts, others are taxed. We call that principle: the UnValue Added Tax (UVAT).

    The main idea is to enforce a viral "pay or contribute" paradigm based on the principle that Time = Money. Either you become an active contributor or sponsor on the project or you accept to pay some cash royalties that will help finance other Jahia developers and help develop new features. Every customer has then the choice to pay his license fee in cash or in kind.
     
  • What is the money received from payment in cash used for?
    Often there is still a lot of work to do that open source developers do not like to implement (such as GUI modifications, configuration wizards, multi-platform installer, tests, documentation ;…). Then, money received from license sales will most of the cases pay maintenance tasks, modifications and new extensions of the software. Then, those that pay a cash royalty also contribute indirectly to the maintenance and the development of the software.
     
  • What are the viral effects of the JSSL or the JCDDL?

    There is only a limited viral effect similar to the the Mozilla license as Jahia  is released under two modified versions of the SUN CDDL. This means that you will have to open source all your modifications on existing files. However you can perfectly create new extensions (e.g. some new classes) and release them under a license of your choice. This is valid both for the Community or the Commercial Editions of Jahia excepted that you can ask for a fair compensation for your work done on the commercial parts.

    Finally there is of course a strong viral effect on royalties for all files released under the Jahia commercial JSSL. If you reuse some of the Jahia code covered by the JSSL in any derivative work, you will have to respect the original JSSL license conditions including the fact that there are some royalties to pay to Jahia Ltd.

     
  • Why have you created another new software license?
    We spent a lot of time reading and analyzing all the existing open source licenses and their underlying business models. No one was really satisfying for us. We fully understand that there is already a lot of different software licensing models in the market, but there isn't any that bring together the following:
    - Free access to the source code and free possible redistribution
    - Limited viral effect (bug fixes and existing code modifications)
    - A limitation for certain type of use (commercial use, internal deployment use)
    - Reduction or Suppression of royalties for active contributors only (payment in kind at the place of payment in cash)

    Some studies exists on such licenses (e.g. Paul Johnson - Liberal Source Software ) but, to our knowledge, no software company has really implemented such a business model yet -except for Jahia, of course!

    Firstly you have to understand the world of open source license. Stig Hackvän has dressed a basic chart of the licensing universe that is quite explicit (Stig Hackvän - http://devlinux.org/devLicense.html):

    Then, we wanted to get the best of the four quarters and position our commercial license in the middle. So, it means:

    - Allowing the exchange of time and code development against an extended right of use
    - Being as close as possible to the Open Source Definition (OSD) and allowing free access to the source code and free possible redistribution (for research and development use only)
    - Reselling a classical commercial licenses for OEM, VARs and to other passive customers that only want to use the technology for their own commercial benefits without becoming an active member of the community (the Jahia project should stay a collaborative and community driven effort where EVERY user contributes in cash... or in kind).
  • Is the JSSL compliant with the Open Source Definition (OSD)?
    No. The JSSL does not respect the Section 1 of the OSD which mention that there should be no royalty at all on the Technology even for OEMs that want to repackage the technology for commercial purpose. Then the JSSL restricts what the FSF call Freedom 0 (freedom to use) but neither restricts free access to the source code neither free possible redistribution of the software.

    In the JSSL, a customer can still use the software for free (no royalty) but he HAS to be involved into the Jahia project as an active contributor. Similar for OEMs. They can redistribute the Software for free but for research, test and demo purposes only. Then their own customers have to take the decision to pay their license royalty in cash or through a contribution in kind.

    So the Jahia license tries to motivate people to become new contributors at the place of just passively and freely using the software that others have developed. The GPL has a viral effect on code (copyleft), we wanted to create such a viral effect on contributions.
     
  • Why have you not chosen to fully open source all the modules of the Jahia Software?
    We do not 100% agree with the freedom to use. We think that this freedom is somehow breaking the open source community. Software companies and developers need to make a living so new business models for open source software companies have emerged but no one is really efficient:

    a) Some companies use piece of open source software and sell closed modules on top of it. But this is going at the opposite of the open source software philosphy. To become a sponsor of an open source project you have to resell some proprietary modules! So it is a big temptation to use brands such as Apache, Linux;... for your marketing needs, to reuse the developments done by the community without contributing anything in return and to resell traditional closed modules on top of that in your own product distribution.

    b) Making money by only redistributing open source free software. Large bandwidth is becoming a commodity and open source software is often available through the Internet so making money only on redistribution is not possible any more. Furthermore, lots of projects can not put an entry barrier by only fixing a high price to their distribution as the GPL allows you to do. For example lots of library may be bought once by a large IT constructor and then be bundled for free in all their software or hardware product. So practically speaking you may only "sell" your software once.

    c) Sell a wide range of professional services around the product. Do not mix bananas and apples is the first thing you learn at the business school. Becoming a software company is NOT becoming an IT Integrator at least until you have a critical size of employees. You have different structure, different needs and different objectives that are really difficult to deal with together. Offering professional services the day and coding software the night is not a viable long term options for a small company.

    d) Creating complex business model to bypass the open source license limit. For example by not providing any technical documentation or not publically releasing what are the stable build number. We do not think that this is a healthy and sustainable way to do business. If you publish your source code, it should be mainly to create a community of developers and not to force these one to buy expensive documentation or yearly subscription programs before being able to get into the code base. This is in fact just a hidden way to create a license fee.

    Furthermore, more and more people are using open source software but more and more are only "passive business end-users". In fact they do not care if the software is open source or not. They just want a competitive solution that works fine in their daily business life. Open source is only a big valuable advantage for their internal IT department and/or their external IT Integrators but those customers have also no problem to pay some license royalties. What is important for them is the fact that the source code is fully open.

    So we wanted a commercial license for the Jahia extensions which is free for all the active contributors on the project but commercial for the others. Then it brings money back to the project to allow better support and debugging and helps finance new functional enhancements or allow us to sponsorize some other purely free software projects such as the free Jahia Community Edition or other third party open source librarires we use in Jahia. That is why we created this fair and sustainable software license (JSSL).
  • Do you offer any reseller programs?
    Yes, Jahia has a variety of reseller and partnership programs. To learn more about partnering with Jahia, please check the following web pages or send an email partners@jahia.org
     
  • I want to use one of the Jahia Commercial Editions as a VAR/OEM and does not want to repackage the source code with the JSSL license for all my customers, is it possible?
    No problem. You can repackage and redistribute the Jahia Commercial Edition without the source code attached under your own license conditions (as far as you respect the JSSL conditions including the fact that you will need to pay some royalties per unit your resell). Your code modifications, if any, just need to be available somewhere and you should mention in your documentation where. Regarding your code extensions, you can license them under any license of your choice.
     
  • I have a customer that wants to use Jahia and to pay us to develop some additional enhancements. Can I develop them on his behalf and contribute the code back to the project so that my customer can avoid paying a license fee in cash?
    Yes. That is exactly the goal of the JSSL license. Most of the time, customers want some additional features especially in the content management and portal area. That's classical. Whatever the CMS or Portal software your customer will choose, he will certainly have to develop some new extensions or enhancements and to pay for that. So in our business model, he may contribute back all his generic developments to the community and in exchange will avoid paying a license fee. It is really a win-win situation. He pays less and he gets the new functional enhancements he wanted. You as a System Integrator, you get more professional services revenues. The Jahia community gains additional code.

    P.S: Contributions should respect the contribution in kind process (Check the "Contribution in kind" page). Custom code for a specific organization is for example not accepted as a contribution in kind. You should only contribute generic Jahia code that other customers may also be able to reuse.

     
  • I'm acting as an ASP. Can I resell some Jahia virtual sites to my customers?
    Yes. We consider Jahia as a content management and portal framework that is sold per server. The use (internal use or commercial use) you are doing of your Jahia server(s) is not relevant for us. So yes, you may offer hosted Jahia services and in such a case we will only consider you, the ASP, as our end-customer.

    Warning: if you plan to resell or install dedicated or remote Jahia servers for your customers you will then not act any more as an ASP but you will act as Jahia reseller. Please check the Partners page to get more information about reselling Jahia. Of course you can provide both services at the same time.
  • What is an "Approved Counterpart"?
    The JSSL license says that you can get a compensation (usually under the form of a license discount or some license credits) if you agree to provide some modifications or extensions to the Jahia project as a counterpart. The basic idea behind this principle is that you can pay your royalty in cash or in kind. The JSSL does not mention explicitly how the contribution will be effectively valued as it may be a quite complex process. This task is let to the responsibility of the technical committee of Jahia Ltd.

    Basically arguments such as:
    - Complexity of the code developed
    - Time needed to develop it
    - Quality of contributions
    - Involvement inside the community
    are taken into consideration on a contributor per contributor basis in order to calculate the value of the counterpart.
     
  • Who decide of what is a valid contribution or not?
    Jahia Ltd through its Technical Committee is the only organization that may decide what is a Approved Counterpart or not and the value of such a contribution.
     
  • Can I reuse my Jahia contributions for other purposes?
    Yes, you reserve all rights, title and interest in and to your Contributions. You may then release your Jahia contributions, to the extent of Your Intellectual Property Rights, under another license if you want to do so (e.g. in the same time under your own commercial license).