[bpmconsultant]

Hi,

This is probably a dumb question, but I will ask it anyway.

Under the terms of the licencing for Community Edition of Processmaker (CE) am I allowed to:

1. Download and install ProcessMaker (CE) on my hosting provider infrastructure for developing and testing business processes ?

2. On behalf of my customers, to download and install ProcessMaker (CE) on their hosting provider infrastructure for them to execute processes in the running of their business (e.g. leave request athorisations etc).

3. To charge my customers a consultancy fee for designing and implementing processes in ProcessMaker for the running of their business.

As a BPM Consultant (and not part of the ProcessMaker Partner Program), I would like to know I am not breaching the terms of ProcessMaker (CE) licencing.

Are you able to give some example of what, as an independent BPM Consultant (and not part of the ProcessMaker Partner Program), I am NOT allowed to do with ProcessMaker (CE) - or what typically would be in breach of the PprocessMaker (CE) license.

Many thanks.

[breale]

Hi,

Absolutely you can do everything you are asking and charge for it!! And we hope you make some decent money doing so

ProcessMaker is licensed as an Open Source Product under the AGPLv3 license. What does this mean? Well, feel free to read the license itself, but in short, you can do everything you want, but if you change ProcessMaker and then want to resell ProcessMaker either by distributing it for download or simply hosting it on a Website for "public" clients (probably more than a few), then you need to make your changes available in source code format. If for some reason, you don't want to make those changes available, then you would need to sign a Commercial Agreement with the ProcessMaker copyright holders (Colosa, Inc.). In other words, Colosa has the right to dual license the software in order to liberate you from what are called the Copyleft restrictions.

Good luck with the ProcessMaker consulting! Colosa and certain certified partners host regular trainings if you want to sharpen your skills on the PM platform.

Regards,

Brian

[bpmconsultant]

Many thanks for the reply Brian - you have confirmed what I thought to be the case.

My background has been Staffware, iProcess, Fuego, Global360, Metastorm.

I am very excited about the forthcoming release of ProcessMaker - the big BPM names have lots of features most of no practical use - ProcessMaker really has been designed for creating solutions, in a short time, to real world business problems and incorporates lots of quick win useful features.

Roll on ProcessMaker 2.0

[breale]

Thanks for the encouragement. We are very excited about this release. We are always trying to add features where we have to without "cluttering" the product. Feel free to send us feedback on what we are doing well and where we are falling short.

Regards,

Brian

[ssnobben]

Many thanks for the reply Brian - you have confirmed what I thought to be the case.

My background has been Staffware, iProcess, Fuego, Global360, Metastorm.

I am very excited about the forthcoming release of ProcessMaker - the big BPM names have lots of features most of no practical use - ProcessMaker really has been designed for creating solutions, in a short time, to real world business problems and incorporates lots of quick win useful features.

Roll on ProcessMaker 2.0

Thats a good background. I remember Staffware a UK company?..what happened with them?

Well good to have people like you on board hope you will help here with improvements..

Best rgds!

[bpmconsultant]

Regarding ProcessMaker Training

I am very interested in any distance/self learning you are able to provide - especially around the 5 day architect course ?



Re: Staffware UK (I miss Nottingham's Pubs!!!)

Staffware was gobbled up by TIBCO
Fuego was gobbled up BEA who were eaten by Oracle
Metastorm is now swallowed by Opentext
Lombardi is being digested by IBM
and Savvion is inside Progress

[ArturoRobles]

Hello bpmconsultant,

I just passed along your contact information to the Sales Dept. so you shall be contacted by them soon with information about our training courses and materials.

Thank you for your interest in ProcessMaker.

[adwil70]

You can check out the difference open source licenses so that you could get an idea of how open source can benefit you as a consultant. They have different means and there are different ways to repackage or earn money of them. As I have understood, you can charge your customer with the services you are to offer them.

[mpowell]

There are actually a lot of ways to earn using ProcessMaker, you can repackage that software making changes in the source code itself, but you can not relabel it and call it your own. You can also use this as a plug in to another programming language where it could be used in a bigger scale. For example, you are going to make a scheduler with the help of the flow chart, then you could use this as a separate function.

[hbeertony3]

good post

[kirilmitev]

Hello guys !

How can I as a company incorporate the Community Version into the solutions we offer?

or..

Can we release only the ProcessMaker changed functionality/source publicly available, without the NECESSARY interface or communication changes we must apply in order to integrate your product to ours ?
Since our products (most of) are not publicly available for download we're wondering what's the case and how to proceed.
And doing so, source will be worthless than the Community Edition itself, wouldn't it ?

Best Regards,
Kiril

[Jabadie]

You should read the description of the AGPL v3 License here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html

[breale]

Kiril,

In short...if you want to incorporate the CE version of ProcessMaker you will have to take into account the copyleft restrictions of the GPL. Basically, you have 2 choices - use the CE edition and then make your changes available for public download (i.e. ProcessMaker will infect the code in your product and make it all open source), or 2) Talk to Colosa about an OEM relationship where Colosa issues your company an OEM license which frees you from the restrictions of the GPL. Since Colosa holds the copyrights to ProcessMaker, it can perform this type of dual licensing.

I hope that is clear.

Brian

[mikethompsonuk82]

It's good to be able to clear up a couple of points regarding what we can do with processmaker. Time to get to work.

[rachelt]

Very excited for this...are you sure it's ok to download and install ProcessMaker (CE) on my clients' hosting acct. for them to execute processes in the running of their business???

[SwondeR]

That is typically a browser error - if you are using IE, try Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced, and uncheck 'show friendly HTTP error messages' to see if will tell you what the real problem is. Alternatively, try a different browser.