If Pentaho is Open Source, can I just use it? [closed] - open-source

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I see that Pentaho wants to charge me for their software. How can I get to the underlying Open Source software for dashboards to see what it can do without having to deal with Pentaho marketing folks?

Most commercial open source editions have a community edition that the community hacks on if the license permits it*. Pentaho is no different from them and has a community edition.
In these cases, the "community edition" is not the same thing as the commercial product you would buy. You may find a lot of the gloss and even some, if not a lot of the features are missing. There's no support. Yadda yadda yadda. You get the picture.
*As others have noted, not all "open source" apps need to distribute the source code in the same way as, a GPL application would. Open source, in rawest forms, just means as a licensed user, you get to see the source code.

Just to provide detail on what pentaho do and dont provide - they do provide a very complete BI platform as part of the community edition.
The only things that the enterprise edition include are a web based dashboard designer and a few other bits and bobs - i.e. not very much at all.
As mentioned above the benefit to becoming a subscription customer with pentaho is that they provide support, which for us was very useful in our final implementation.
Check out their forums too though - they are very active, and as long as your questions arnt complete newbie ones they are very helpful too. I sometimes use the forums despite having a support agreement as i know it can be quicker.

"Open source" is not the same thing as "free" (either "as in beer" or "as in speech").
As much as I'm not a fan of Stallman in general, this article will probably help clear up the distictions a bit: Why "Open Source" misses the point of Free Software

Open Source != Free
IANAL, but I'd say you're bound to the license that the software is under.

Suds get your free download of the code from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pentaho/
They have an IRC chat channel as well that ive found to be extremely helpful.

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Open Source Alternative for Documentum [closed]

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Is there any open source alternative to Documentum CMS. While doing the evaluation for this I came across Alfresco, Nuxeo and Apache Jackrabbit. I would like to know if I missed something and If there are any other products that I missed.
Thanks in advance.
Regards
Ajai G
You pretty got the point.
Nuxeo is based on Open Source but you have to pay the license, and is pretty expensive (at this point, Documentum is better anyway.
Apache Jackrabbit, I personally never saw in action, so I don't have a clue. Apache is a strong Open Source mass of projects, so I think for a Java developer is a great point to start.
Alfresco, at last, is the best choice here, 'cuz you have Enterprise and Community versions, if you want to pay for support or note. Here, if you are/have Java developers in team, you can create a pretty nice web-app with some great tools like sharing content/workflow/full text indexing and so on.
I think it's the most complete system out there, and it really have great potential.
I work for a company that is making business with this product, and I have to say we're very happy about it.
So full disclosure - I work for Nuxeo. But I want to clear up a misconception: Nuxeo is fully open source, and does not charge for licenses. The code's on GitHub. There's only one version - no enterprise / community versions. We charge for a subscription to support, maintenance, and a customization tooling.
This is pretty much these ones, AFAIC I would go with Nuxeo
#Alch3mi5t Nuxeo is completely opensource and free (LGPL), even more than Afresco:
There is no difference between a Community and a Enterprise version, it's just the same. Customers who are paying have the same product than any other people.
What are they paying for ?
Nuxeo Studio, a online graphical tool to easily customize Nuxeo without having to edit xml nor having to write java code.
Support to get answers to questions
Hot fixes on a specific release can be easily installed from the admin center. (sources are available in github, if you are not a Nuxeo Customer, and you can rebuild these one with maven)
If you need to do more complex customization, here is where Java developers would be happy. Nuxeo has a
pluggable architecture with plugins and extension points, almost anything in nuxeo can be overridden in Nuxeo with extension points: UI, server and feature configuration, core configuration, document structures, rest services, backend DB, etc ... it's quite powerful.
There is a free and opensource plugin for eclipse to help java developers: Nuxeo IDE
don't hesitate to ask any questions on the irc channel: #nuxeo in freenode

What and when do I have to disclose, if I use open source software for a totally different use? [closed]

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If I make a (web-based if it matters) game and have the inventory portion of it from an open source inventory program, what do I disclose?
I would say part X came from open source, or I just "hacked" then inventory system and put my game as a front end.
I just don't know where I put that on my website, or do I wait until someone asks? Does this mean my part of the software is also open source? What am I supposed to do?
I'm not sure how to ask it. I want to do the right thing and all.
It depends on the license that the open source inventory program is under. Have you looked into that yet?
This is a good place to start for comparisons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_software_licenses
You have not asked much specific with your question. The general answer is: It depends.
On what does it depend you might then ask yourself. It depends on the usage terms of the software you make use of.
You only have shared so far that the software is "open source". That term does not say much. It could mean you refer to an OSI certified Opensourcetm license, however, you wrote "open source" which might be a different term. Probably you have picked something from github (compare: Can I use the code in a Github project which does not have a license specified?) ?
So unless you do not share which kind of license that is you talk about not much could be said:
If it is a permissive Free Software license, your code can normally stay under it's own license.
If it is a copyleft Free Software license, your code normally is being licensed under the same license.
If it is a compromise license, it depends on the type of work and way of interaction / derivation / usage / packaging.
In any case it always depends on
the concrete licenses for all works in question.
the concrete type of work and way of combining it with your work.
if you plan to go conform with the licensing or you want to exploit it.
You have not specified much of both, so no better suggestion can be given. Also take note that IANAL and this is only some personal opinion of a layman.
And do not wait until someone does something. You should be the active party to find out. That works best by contacting the original author of that component, tell her what you want to do with it and keep the written allowance you get from her with your records. Especially as you are unsure. And the original author has enough power to allow you things even apart from the public visible license btw..

Should I use opensource software in my commerical app? [closed]

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This is a point that has always confused me about open source software. Normally, I write everything from scratch. What I'm trying to find out is what licenses allows me to do this?
Stay away from the GPL (LGPL is okay) and you won't have any problems. If you want to include GPLed packages in your application, things get tricky. BSD and MIT style licenses will get you the fewest obligations. In general, find the software package you want to use and read the license. They're usually pretty straightforward about what is and is not acceptable to do.
Why would you want to do more work? Of course you should. All you have to do is redistribute the OS technology source with your app (I am not a lawyer, but thats how I understand it).
The assumes
1) You are talking about an established open source solution, like hibernate, that you can reasonably assume works well.
2) The product you are developing is not using the open source technology as the 'secret sauce' that is going to make you money. Else you might have to open source that special part of your app.
If the software actually fits what you're trying to do, then yes it does cut down on development time. If the software mostly fits what you're trying to do you may end up spending more time trying to work with it rather than solving the problem it's meant to solve.
I am not a lawyer, so be sure to run a license past legal council if in doubt
As far as licensing goes, there are a number of licenses that allow you to incorporate the software into your commercial application. Most of the time as long as the license isn't a Copyleft type license (i.e. GPL) you can distribute the software as is. If you have to make changes that get distributed with your application, some licenses will requires the source also be distributed with it and an indication of what's different from the core project.

What needs to be done, when publishing Open Source Software which uses other free libraries? [closed]

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I would like to publish my application, which is AGPL. It can be downloaded from my website. But the archive also contains other libraries with different licenses:
XStream (BSD)
GWT (Apache2)
gwt-dnd (Apache2)
gwt-upload (Apache2)
Commons Fileupload (Apache2)
JDOM (Apache-style)
iText (AGPL)
JFreeChart (LGPL)
JavaMail (JavaMail)
I didn't change any of these libraries, I just use them. What do I have to do?
Do I have to mention the used libraries on my website or in the COPYING file in my application archive?
Do I have to mention the authors?
Do I have to mention all the licenses?
Do I have to provide all the licenses somehow to my users?
Since answering to my question could be legal advice and therefore problematic, is there a project online which looks similar to mine? Perhaps there is an "anonymous" answer to my question?
People answering legal or licensing questions are not trying to be evasive. But it's hard to answer licensing questions in a way that can be as accurate as the terms spelled out in the license itself. Trying to interpret legal text can expose one to liability if one gets it even slightly wrong (even non-lawyers can be held liable).
Many questions about GPL are answered in plain English here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
The Apache License 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0) covers terms of redistribution. See for example section 4, paragraph 4.
The New BSD License covers terms of redistribution (for both source and binaries) in the second paragaph. That license in particular is quite short, and easy to read.
Do not make business decisions without consulting with a legal professional.
You will have to provide it for all those libraries that require it as per their respective licensing requirements.
You have to read the licenses, and act accordingly.

What are the websites to look for open source projects to work on? [closed]

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I am currently working as a consultant but i found that i have not been doing coding for a very long time.
So i wonder if there are any other nice websites beside sourceforge.net which can allows me to do some coding.
Thanks
sourceforge.net - All sorts of open source software, from Linux to BSD to Windows.
codeplex.com - Mainly Microsoft technologies-focused. This is where you'll find more of the .NET open source stuff.
For general indexes to open source software, see freshmeat and Ohloh. The former is a classic index of open source software and the latter has statistics about the source code for each project, which might be handy if you want to judge how active a project is.
If you want to join easily, distributed revision control is nice. The big hosting sites for Mercurial (Bitbucket), Git (Github) and Bazaar (Launchpad) should give you plenty of projects to browse and, hopefully, contribute to :-)
OpenHatch (openhatch.org) is nifty (IMO) because:
The site provides a number of "bite size" bugs from Free Open Source Software (FOSS) projects.
There is a Map showing the registered users in your area, along with the langauges and projects they are involved in.
The site provides an email forwarding address with rotating "anti-spam salt" by which other contributors may reach out to contact you. (You may choose whether to use this, or provide an alternate means to contact you on the site.)
Also, there's Github and Google Code
Google Code.
IMO, much nicer than SourceForge.
How about Google Summer of Code?
If you're just looking for a small quick project, Clusterify.
Ohloh is an other good collection of open source projects.
It provide details, timeline and notes.
There's lots of under served open source sectors that you can give your extra time to.
You don't have to do what everyone else is doing, take for example, the loads of time wasting CMS projects out there, while there seems to be no proper OCR in Java, and Jira is a great issue tracking system, no doubt, but its not open source, Bugzilla sucks, don't say Mantis, and Eventum is written in PHP(I'm a Java fanatic)
The best source for open source projects is of course sourceforge.net, Google code, not so much.
We can not say that one website is better, it depends on the domain you work, so your best friend is well http://www.google.com with your keywords