Archives
Contributors
-
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
Hi Enric,
ok, i obviously didn't recall this fact. In order to make this comparison stable, we should find comparable siblings of those to by any stable internal complexity measure (maybe McCabe or Halstead is enough for now) and than compare the contributions (again by stable measures) over time
Best Frederik
Am 12.09.25 um 21:41 schrieb Enric Tobella Alomar:
Hi Frederik,
Thanks for laying out your thoughts so clearly.
I agree with the idea of experimenting before making real changes, but I think we need to be cautious with the assumption that moving from AGPL to LGPL automatically results in higher adoption and more contributions. We already have a couple of real-world “experiments” inside OCA itself:
- edi-framework
- queue_job
Both were licensed under LGPL rather than AGPL, and yet they did not attract significantly more contributors or maintainers compared to their AGPL counterparts. If anything, the contributor base has remained relatively small and fixed over the years. This suggests that the license alone is not the determining factor for contributions — other aspects like module complexity, required expertise, or the integrators’ business model also play a huge role.
So the licensing impact turns out to be limited (as our current examples suggest).
For me, it would be more relevant to study why communities like "Spanish Odoo Association" are able to attract so many supporters. They have a similar message, but they have a different strategy that allows to engage most of EE companies. Maybe these people are not making PRs, but at least they make a monetary effort that helps contributors.
Best regards,
El vie, 12 sept 2025 a las 21:22, Frederik Kramer (<notifications@odoo-community.org>) escribió:
Hi Raphael,
as always very detailed and very insightful thoughts. Honestly, i can't add much value here than just saying you are right with all you said in my opinion. The 20/80 relation for LGPL/AGPL sounds quite reasonable (even if Pareto edges almost always apply).
I'll take the fear / discomfort of Pedro (and Enric) very reasonable, so instead of doing to much to fast, I would suggest to start with a controlled experiment (that even Pedro and Enric would be willing to agree to).
The experiment could look like as follows:
Take a small, but prominent baseline or infrastructure module that we know or assume many people use (even many in illegal ways (just like Tom pointed out) as of today) were a solid majority (of OCA members) and the whole responsible PSC believes would be better if it were licensed under LGPL (or at least has no objections). Lets the responsible owners induce the license change from AGPL to LGPL, advertise this change, make an effort to publish and post about the module, the change and its useful usage, encourage to actively contribute...
and than measure diversity, total amount, quality of contributions, speed of migrations etc. for that very module over a longer period of time (+/- 1 year) and compare it with the AGPL population of similarly reasonable baseline and infrastructure moduls licensed under AGPL.
That way we can easily test hypothesis without taking much risk. If the most supported hypothesis (i.e. some few baseline / infra modules LGPL, 80% business logic modules AGPL -> induces more adoption / contribution) we should see first supporting data from that experiment.
Best Frederik
Am 12.09.25 um 17:23 schrieb Raphaël Valyi:
Hello, I think I need to share how I see the big picture.
But first, let me exemplify again with an Odoo market I know very well. You may know that OCA/l10-brazil is the most active OCA repo (14k commits, 4000+ PRs, 150k lines of code, 70 contributors). Not because Brazil is an ERP eldorado but exactly because it is often pointed as the hardest ERP market (you need 200+ tax fields on an invoice line, a company doesn't use all of them but certainly some 60-80, a diversity of 80% companies use may be 180 of them. Same thing e-invoicing has 800 fiscal fields and is over SOAP...).Well there are now 50 official Odoo partners in Brazil, I'm pretty solid, the large majority is a scam of disposable noobs (half life = 1.5 year) who believed it was just about reselling Odoo EE. The vast majority just fail their projects like lemmings (they call us later) as soon as they venture outside of CRM or project management. As I follow the Github notifications I can guarantee you these 50 partners never contributed a SINGLE PR to the OCA. In fact it seems only people unable to do a line of code or use Google to get an overlook would partner. So the selection is pretty inverted (Dunning Krueger)... Instead, aside from Akretion, you now have Escodoo and Engenere who are serious people, CE only, and contributing many PRs to the OCA (outside of OCA/l10-brazil as well). But when I read this from Quartile https://www.quartile.co/en_US/blog/odoo-bits-pieces-1/essential-criteria-for-selecting-your-odoo-partner-as-an-end-user-company-120 let's say it matches my experience.
I also know the French market very well as I pretty much started it 15 years ago (remember openerp.com used the open source ERP whilepaper I wrote at Smile on their frontpage for some 3 years). And I can tell you the quality of the official partner network dropped a lot. 10 years ago they were a well intentioned elite (before Odoo turned it into a "market for lemon", and now, aside from a few exceptions they are mostly a scam, mediocre at best. Less than 5% of these French partners contribute PRs to the OCA on a yearly basis...
Overall, I feel Odoo is doing an unassumed transition from an innovative customizable ERP framework to a SaaS product. In fact they grew a bubble since the start. Since they had to rival with the $ 20 millions inflated Openbravo bubble, continuing with their 10x exaggerated SaaS business model from 2010 for Sofinnova (Fabien shared it with me, as the 2nd partner on the American continent, I helped convince Sofinnova, I protested to Fabien it was inflated but kept quiet as he suggested). Then came the "sorrySAP" crap in 2013, the invention of the millions of happy users worldwide, the $ 500 millions secondary market investments...
Odoo themselves raised little money (on the primary market), less than $ 15 millions I think. In fact, since the start that is the partner network who fueled the growth. Then Odoo "pivoted" and dumped the "stupid partners who believed in that free software concept", made all the impossible early cases possible, did a crazy R&D... Remember that the 1st TinyERP web client didn't come from TinyERP themselves but was a 3rd party contribution (by Axelor)...In a way Odoo externalized the cost of the bubble to its partner network: "sign your project with the latest noob Gold partner who paid for its status and it will be like you will be doing your project with an Acsone or Akretion engineer with 10+ years of Odoo experience". Pretty much what they sold before Odoo EE was a product in itself...
It worked for a while. It grew in quantity while dropping in quality. This is exactly what is called a "market for lemon" with a quality converging to zero as it was shown by Nobel laureate George AkerlofAt the same time Odoo has been improving its product a lot that is very True. Odoo is now quite well coded and is even pretty solid.
Finally, I think Odoo is in the middle of a transition: It is very likely Odoo Enterprise succeeds as a limited SaaS product for micro-companies (like Salesforce, Netsuite). Success will obviously depend on the country. And I think it's quite nice if they meet this success while funding the Odoo CE core under the LGPL license. Much like Basecamp or later Shopify funded the Rails framework.
What I find very "questionable" in fact is that they use the money from these partners they are fooling and their own customers to fund their transition toward an unassumed double agenda of a SaaS ERP for micro-companies. Indeed, Odoo will never assume the average quality of its partner network is crashing to zero.
But this is my vision: yes the partner network will stick to a very low quality for years and years (read again the implacable mechanics of the Market for Lemon) to come and an Odoo Enterprise code and license which is not designed for customizations or extensions but solely to protect the Odoo own IP.And no, I don't see a bright future for this ecosystem of EE partners so that's why I suggest the OCA don't fool itself too much into trying to accommodate with the Odoo SA business roadmap.
And finally, while I said all this, I do share the concern that AGPL is a bit business unfriendly and I do agree we need some LGPL in the OCA to make it easy for companies using Odoo+OCA to protect some of their IP.What is a good mileage? I don't know, maybe 20% LGPL and 80% AGPL would be nice.
@Tom:
About dual licensing again: it should be an opt-in option for the module authors but not forced otherwise you are simply hijacking the AGPL projection the modules authors might expect.And also, the OCA will never be able to check if some business is using a valid LGPL exception module they purchased from the OCA. This simple fact would make it possible the AGPL would be violated massively meanwhile.
Thank you if you read it through ;-)
On Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 1:57 PM Stéphane Bidoul <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:
Pedro,
Please don't assert things you can't possibly know about how other companies operate and why.
Best,
-Stéphane
On Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 3:32 PM Pedro M. Baeza <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:
So you have provided the perfect example for confirming the hypothesis that going LGPL, the number of contributions will be reduced: how can it be that Tecnativa, having only 10 persons, contributes 4x more than companies like Camptocamp/Acsone, that have 40/50 persons?
They develop on top of enterprise modules, which they can't share, so they don't contribute to OCA.
They develop more private things, as they are allowed due to the license being LGPL, so they don't contribute back to OCA.
And again, remember the big vendor lock-in you are imposing on your customers installing enterprise modules, being the vendor Odoo S.A., not you. And even not advertising that to your customers (by ignorance or complacency). That's the big win of Odoo doing that the conversation doesn't turn around this.
Regards._______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
--
Raphaël ValyiFounder and consultant
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
-- Dr.-Ing. Frederik Kramer Geschäftsführer initOS GmbH Innungsstraße 7 21244 Buchholz i.d.N. Tel: +49 (0) 4181 13503 12 Fax: +49 (0) 4181 13503 10 Mobil: +49 (0) 179 3901819 Email: frederik.kramer@initos.com Internet: www.initos.com Geschäftsführung: Dr.-Ing. Frederik Kramer & Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Torsten Francke Sitz der Gesellschaft: Buchholz i.d.N. Amtsgericht Tostedt, HRB 205226 USt-IdNr.: DE815580155 Steuer-Nr: 15/200/53247
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
--
Enric Tobella AlomarCEO & Founder
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
-- Dr.-Ing. Frederik Kramer Geschäftsführer initOS GmbH Innungsstraße 7 21244 Buchholz i.d.N. Tel: +49 (0) 4181 13503 12 Fax: +49 (0) 4181 13503 10 Mobil: +49 (0) 179 3901819 Email: frederik.kramer@initos.com Internet: www.initos.com Geschäftsführung: Dr.-Ing. Frederik Kramer & Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Torsten Francke Sitz der Gesellschaft: Buchholz i.d.N. Amtsgericht Tostedt, HRB 205226 USt-IdNr.: DE815580155 Steuer-Nr: 15/200/53247
by Frederik Kramer - 09:55 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Community Contribution Statistics
Hi Enric,
I honestly think that people running for the board of the OCA really want to devote a good junk of their time "to make Odoo mightier together" and help us all to succeed what we belive is our joint dreams instead of taking and keeping prestigous role just because.
Unfortunately many context factors don't render that pursue (i.e. being impactful AND successful on the Board) easy. If we have enough volontueers this year running and forming a new board, maybe you include again, with a really tough agenda and problems already on the line or insight (among as trivial stuff as financially sustain the OCA), i am happy to devote my OCA time from a back seat and let others do this job, not being indirectly accused for taking one of the precious seats again.
At least i would not have to take care anymore about things i DO NOT love nearly as much as contributing real community value to an overall healthy and motivated community (that was my initial motivation to run for the board).
The reality is, most of the work on the board has not been too much fun (especially lately) and am happy to hand things over to new people. Remember i personally tried to convince 5-6 newbies for the board last year out of which 1 (namely Ivan) was running and has been elected. Ivan did a great job and was a great value to the team so far. Same was Tom. So in order to move things into that direction we may organize a little on stage "running for the board" campaign next week in which volunteers can present themselfes and their agendas to the members around. What do you think ?
Best Frederik
Am 12.09.25 um 18:57 schrieb Enric Tobella Alomar:
Hi Tom,
Sadly, I am unable to come this year for some personal reasons. I am sure that we can make an online meeting if you are interested.
Regarding the board, this has been a recurring topic in the community. What strikes me as odd is that while renewal is regularly encouraged, most former board members still run for re-election. In some cases, even when there were enough new candidates to fill the seats, the former members were all re-elected.
If we don’t intentionally make space for new candidates, it will be difficult to bring in fresh perspectives. I don’t have a definitive solution, but I believe it’s worth reflecting on how we can better encourage and support renewal.
I know that there is some new faces on the board (like you this year). I hope this trend continues.
Kind regards,
El vie, 12 sept 2025 a las 16:52, Tom Blauwendraat (<notifications@odoo-community.org>) escribió:
On 8/22/25 15:32, Enric Tobella Alomar wrote: > On the Board, I share your concern. At my first OCA Days (2018 or > 2019), the Board asked for proposals to completely renew itself. Since > then, few members have stepped aside, but some remain there. Maybe, at > some point, stepping aside could help bring new perspectives. What we have tried to do here in the past year is to form Workgroups, with the goal of diverting the actual work there. Nobody wants to be a Board member, but there are a lot more people who want to contribute to a small part that they feel enthousiastic about. This idea could be built upon. > Personally, I would like to see a mandate limit on the Board, PSC > formal election definition and a clear reflection of how each role is > decided, but it is my personal opinion. Will you be at the OCA days to join discussions on how to come from opinions to actual proposals that can be implemented?
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
--
Enric Tobella AlomarCEO & Founder
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
-- Dr.-Ing. Frederik Kramer Geschäftsführer initOS GmbH Innungsstraße 7 21244 Buchholz i.d.N. Tel: +49 (0) 4181 13503 12 Fax: +49 (0) 4181 13503 10 Mobil: +49 (0) 179 3901819 Email: frederik.kramer@initos.com Internet: www.initos.com Geschäftsführung: Dr.-Ing. Frederik Kramer & Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Torsten Francke Sitz der Gesellschaft: Buchholz i.d.N. Amtsgericht Tostedt, HRB 205226 USt-IdNr.: DE815580155 Steuer-Nr: 15/200/53247
by Frederik Kramer - 09:46 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
Hi Frederik,
Thanks for laying out your thoughts so clearly.
I agree with the idea of experimenting before making real changes, but I think we need to be cautious with the assumption that moving from AGPL to LGPL automatically results in higher adoption and more contributions. We already have a couple of real-world “experiments” inside OCA itself:
- edi-framework
- queue_job
Both were licensed under LGPL rather than AGPL, and yet they did not attract significantly more contributors or maintainers compared to their AGPL counterparts. If anything, the contributor base has remained relatively small and fixed over the years. This suggests that the license alone is not the determining factor for contributions — other aspects like module complexity, required expertise, or the integrators’ business model also play a huge role.
So the licensing impact turns out to be limited (as our current examples suggest).For me, it would be more relevant to study why communities like "Spanish Odoo Association" are able to attract so many supporters. They have a similar message, but they have a different strategy that allows to engage most of EE companies. Maybe these people are not making PRs, but at least they make a monetary effort that helps contributors.
Best regards,El vie, 12 sept 2025 a las 21:22, Frederik Kramer (<notifications@odoo-community.org>) escribió:Hi Raphael,
as always very detailed and very insightful thoughts. Honestly, i can't add much value here than just saying you are right with all you said in my opinion. The 20/80 relation for LGPL/AGPL sounds quite reasonable (even if Pareto edges almost always apply).
I'll take the fear / discomfort of Pedro (and Enric) very reasonable, so instead of doing to much to fast, I would suggest to start with a controlled experiment (that even Pedro and Enric would be willing to agree to).
The experiment could look like as follows:
Take a small, but prominent baseline or infrastructure module that we know or assume many people use (even many in illegal ways (just like Tom pointed out) as of today) were a solid majority (of OCA members) and the whole responsible PSC believes would be better if it were licensed under LGPL (or at least has no objections). Lets the responsible owners induce the license change from AGPL to LGPL, advertise this change, make an effort to publish and post about the module, the change and its useful usage, encourage to actively contribute...
and than measure diversity, total amount, quality of contributions, speed of migrations etc. for that very module over a longer period of time (+/- 1 year) and compare it with the AGPL population of similarly reasonable baseline and infrastructure moduls licensed under AGPL.
That way we can easily test hypothesis without taking much risk. If the most supported hypothesis (i.e. some few baseline / infra modules LGPL, 80% business logic modules AGPL -> induces more adoption / contribution) we should see first supporting data from that experiment.
Best Frederik
Am 12.09.25 um 17:23 schrieb Raphaël Valyi:
Hello, I think I need to share how I see the big picture.
But first, let me exemplify again with an Odoo market I know very well. You may know that OCA/l10-brazil is the most active OCA repo (14k commits, 4000+ PRs, 150k lines of code, 70 contributors). Not because Brazil is an ERP eldorado but exactly because it is often pointed as the hardest ERP market (you need 200+ tax fields on an invoice line, a company doesn't use all of them but certainly some 60-80, a diversity of 80% companies use may be 180 of them. Same thing e-invoicing has 800 fiscal fields and is over SOAP...).Well there are now 50 official Odoo partners in Brazil, I'm pretty solid, the large majority is a scam of disposable noobs (half life = 1.5 year) who believed it was just about reselling Odoo EE. The vast majority just fail their projects like lemmings (they call us later) as soon as they venture outside of CRM or project management. As I follow the Github notifications I can guarantee you these 50 partners never contributed a SINGLE PR to the OCA. In fact it seems only people unable to do a line of code or use Google to get an overlook would partner. So the selection is pretty inverted (Dunning Krueger)... Instead, aside from Akretion, you now have Escodoo and Engenere who are serious people, CE only, and contributing many PRs to the OCA (outside of OCA/l10-brazil as well). But when I read this from Quartile https://www.quartile.co/en_US/blog/odoo-bits-pieces-1/essential-criteria-for-selecting-your-odoo-partner-as-an-end-user-company-120 let's say it matches my experience.
I also know the French market very well as I pretty much started it 15 years ago (remember openerp.com used the open source ERP whilepaper I wrote at Smile on their frontpage for some 3 years). And I can tell you the quality of the official partner network dropped a lot. 10 years ago they were a well intentioned elite (before Odoo turned it into a "market for lemon", and now, aside from a few exceptions they are mostly a scam, mediocre at best. Less than 5% of these French partners contribute PRs to the OCA on a yearly basis...
Overall, I feel Odoo is doing an unassumed transition from an innovative customizable ERP framework to a SaaS product. In fact they grew a bubble since the start. Since they had to rival with the $ 20 millions inflated Openbravo bubble, continuing with their 10x exaggerated SaaS business model from 2010 for Sofinnova (Fabien shared it with me, as the 2nd partner on the American continent, I helped convince Sofinnova, I protested to Fabien it was inflated but kept quiet as he suggested). Then came the "sorrySAP" crap in 2013, the invention of the millions of happy users worldwide, the $ 500 millions secondary market investments...
Odoo themselves raised little money (on the primary market), less than $ 15 millions I think. In fact, since the start that is the partner network who fueled the growth. Then Odoo "pivoted" and dumped the "stupid partners who believed in that free software concept", made all the impossible early cases possible, did a crazy R&D... Remember that the 1st TinyERP web client didn't come from TinyERP themselves but was a 3rd party contribution (by Axelor)...In a way Odoo externalized the cost of the bubble to its partner network: "sign your project with the latest noob Gold partner who paid for its status and it will be like you will be doing your project with an Acsone or Akretion engineer with 10+ years of Odoo experience". Pretty much what they sold before Odoo EE was a product in itself...
It worked for a while. It grew in quantity while dropping in quality. This is exactly what is called a "market for lemon" with a quality converging to zero as it was shown by Nobel laureate George AkerlofAt the same time Odoo has been improving its product a lot that is very True. Odoo is now quite well coded and is even pretty solid.
Finally, I think Odoo is in the middle of a transition: It is very likely Odoo Enterprise succeeds as a limited SaaS product for micro-companies (like Salesforce, Netsuite). Success will obviously depend on the country. And I think it's quite nice if they meet this success while funding the Odoo CE core under the LGPL license. Much like Basecamp or later Shopify funded the Rails framework.
What I find very "questionable" in fact is that they use the money from these partners they are fooling and their own customers to fund their transition toward an unassumed double agenda of a SaaS ERP for micro-companies. Indeed, Odoo will never assume the average quality of its partner network is crashing to zero.
But this is my vision: yes the partner network will stick to a very low quality for years and years (read again the implacable mechanics of the Market for Lemon) to come and an Odoo Enterprise code and license which is not designed for customizations or extensions but solely to protect the Odoo own IP.And no, I don't see a bright future for this ecosystem of EE partners so that's why I suggest the OCA don't fool itself too much into trying to accommodate with the Odoo SA business roadmap.
And finally, while I said all this, I do share the concern that AGPL is a bit business unfriendly and I do agree we need some LGPL in the OCA to make it easy for companies using Odoo+OCA to protect some of their IP.What is a good mileage? I don't know, maybe 20% LGPL and 80% AGPL would be nice.
@Tom:
About dual licensing again: it should be an opt-in option for the module authors but not forced otherwise you are simply hijacking the AGPL projection the modules authors might expect.And also, the OCA will never be able to check if some business is using a valid LGPL exception module they purchased from the OCA. This simple fact would make it possible the AGPL would be violated massively meanwhile.
Thank you if you read it through ;-)
On Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 1:57 PM Stéphane Bidoul <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:
Pedro,
Please don't assert things you can't possibly know about how other companies operate and why.
Best,
-Stéphane
On Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 3:32 PM Pedro M. Baeza <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:
So you have provided the perfect example for confirming the hypothesis that going LGPL, the number of contributions will be reduced: how can it be that Tecnativa, having only 10 persons, contributes 4x more than companies like Camptocamp/Acsone, that have 40/50 persons?
They develop on top of enterprise modules, which they can't share, so they don't contribute to OCA.
They develop more private things, as they are allowed due to the license being LGPL, so they don't contribute back to OCA.
And again, remember the big vendor lock-in you are imposing on your customers installing enterprise modules, being the vendor Odoo S.A., not you. And even not advertising that to your customers (by ignorance or complacency). That's the big win of Odoo doing that the conversation doesn't turn around this.
Regards._______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
--
Raphaël ValyiFounder and consultant
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
-- Dr.-Ing. Frederik Kramer Geschäftsführer initOS GmbH Innungsstraße 7 21244 Buchholz i.d.N. Tel: +49 (0) 4181 13503 12 Fax: +49 (0) 4181 13503 10 Mobil: +49 (0) 179 3901819 Email: frederik.kramer@initos.com Internet: www.initos.com Geschäftsführung: Dr.-Ing. Frederik Kramer & Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Torsten Francke Sitz der Gesellschaft: Buchholz i.d.N. Amtsgericht Tostedt, HRB 205226 USt-IdNr.: DE815580155 Steuer-Nr: 15/200/53247
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
--Enric Tobella AlomarCEO & Founder
by Enric Tobella Alomar - 09:41 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
Hi Raphael,
as always very detailed and very insightful thoughts. Honestly, i can't add much value here than just saying you are right with all you said in my opinion. The 20/80 relation for LGPL/AGPL sounds quite reasonable (even if Pareto edges almost always apply).
I'll take the fear / discomfort of Pedro (and Enric) very reasonable, so instead of doing to much to fast, I would suggest to start with a controlled experiment (that even Pedro and Enric would be willing to agree to).
The experiment could look like as follows:
Take a small, but prominent baseline or infrastructure module that we know or assume many people use (even many in illegal ways (just like Tom pointed out) as of today) were a solid majority (of OCA members) and the whole responsible PSC believes would be better if it were licensed under LGPL (or at least has no objections). Lets the responsible owners induce the license change from AGPL to LGPL, advertise this change, make an effort to publish and post about the module, the change and its useful usage, encourage to actively contribute...
and than measure diversity, total amount, quality of contributions, speed of migrations etc. for that very module over a longer period of time (+/- 1 year) and compare it with the AGPL population of similarly reasonable baseline and infrastructure moduls licensed under AGPL.
That way we can easily test hypothesis without taking much risk. If the most supported hypothesis (i.e. some few baseline / infra modules LGPL, 80% business logic modules AGPL -> induces more adoption / contribution) we should see first supporting data from that experiment.
Best Frederik
Am 12.09.25 um 17:23 schrieb Raphaël Valyi:
Hello, I think I need to share how I see the big picture.
But first, let me exemplify again with an Odoo market I know very well. You may know that OCA/l10-brazil is the most active OCA repo (14k commits, 4000+ PRs, 150k lines of code, 70 contributors). Not because Brazil is an ERP eldorado but exactly because it is often pointed as the hardest ERP market (you need 200+ tax fields on an invoice line, a company doesn't use all of them but certainly some 60-80, a diversity of 80% companies use may be 180 of them. Same thing e-invoicing has 800 fiscal fields and is over SOAP...).Well there are now 50 official Odoo partners in Brazil, I'm pretty solid, the large majority is a scam of disposable noobs (half life = 1.5 year) who believed it was just about reselling Odoo EE. The vast majority just fail their projects like lemmings (they call us later) as soon as they venture outside of CRM or project management. As I follow the Github notifications I can guarantee you these 50 partners never contributed a SINGLE PR to the OCA. In fact it seems only people unable to do a line of code or use Google to get an overlook would partner. So the selection is pretty inverted (Dunning Krueger)... Instead, aside from Akretion, you now have Escodoo and Engenere who are serious people, CE only, and contributing many PRs to the OCA (outside of OCA/l10-brazil as well). But when I read this from Quartile https://www.quartile.co/en_US/blog/odoo-bits-pieces-1/essential-criteria-for-selecting-your-odoo-partner-as-an-end-user-company-120 let's say it matches my experience.
I also know the French market very well as I pretty much started it 15 years ago (remember openerp.com used the open source ERP whilepaper I wrote at Smile on their frontpage for some 3 years). And I can tell you the quality of the official partner network dropped a lot. 10 years ago they were a well intentioned elite (before Odoo turned it into a "market for lemon", and now, aside from a few exceptions they are mostly a scam, mediocre at best. Less than 5% of these French partners contribute PRs to the OCA on a yearly basis...
Overall, I feel Odoo is doing an unassumed transition from an innovative customizable ERP framework to a SaaS product. In fact they grew a bubble since the start. Since they had to rival with the $ 20 millions inflated Openbravo bubble, continuing with their 10x exaggerated SaaS business model from 2010 for Sofinnova (Fabien shared it with me, as the 2nd partner on the American continent, I helped convince Sofinnova, I protested to Fabien it was inflated but kept quiet as he suggested). Then came the "sorrySAP" crap in 2013, the invention of the millions of happy users worldwide, the $ 500 millions secondary market investments...
Odoo themselves raised little money (on the primary market), less than $ 15 millions I think. In fact, since the start that is the partner network who fueled the growth. Then Odoo "pivoted" and dumped the "stupid partners who believed in that free software concept", made all the impossible early cases possible, did a crazy R&D... Remember that the 1st TinyERP web client didn't come from TinyERP themselves but was a 3rd party contribution (by Axelor)...In a way Odoo externalized the cost of the bubble to its partner network: "sign your project with the latest noob Gold partner who paid for its status and it will be like you will be doing your project with an Acsone or Akretion engineer with 10+ years of Odoo experience". Pretty much what they sold before Odoo EE was a product in itself...
It worked for a while. It grew in quantity while dropping in quality. This is exactly what is called a "market for lemon" with a quality converging to zero as it was shown by Nobel laureate George AkerlofAt the same time Odoo has been improving its product a lot that is very True. Odoo is now quite well coded and is even pretty solid.
Finally, I think Odoo is in the middle of a transition: It is very likely Odoo Enterprise succeeds as a limited SaaS product for micro-companies (like Salesforce, Netsuite). Success will obviously depend on the country. And I think it's quite nice if they meet this success while funding the Odoo CE core under the LGPL license. Much like Basecamp or later Shopify funded the Rails framework.
What I find very "questionable" in fact is that they use the money from these partners they are fooling and their own customers to fund their transition toward an unassumed double agenda of a SaaS ERP for micro-companies. Indeed, Odoo will never assume the average quality of its partner network is crashing to zero.
But this is my vision: yes the partner network will stick to a very low quality for years and years (read again the implacable mechanics of the Market for Lemon) to come and an Odoo Enterprise code and license which is not designed for customizations or extensions but solely to protect the Odoo own IP.And no, I don't see a bright future for this ecosystem of EE partners so that's why I suggest the OCA don't fool itself too much into trying to accommodate with the Odoo SA business roadmap.
And finally, while I said all this, I do share the concern that AGPL is a bit business unfriendly and I do agree we need some LGPL in the OCA to make it easy for companies using Odoo+OCA to protect some of their IP.What is a good mileage? I don't know, maybe 20% LGPL and 80% AGPL would be nice.
@Tom:
About dual licensing again: it should be an opt-in option for the module authors but not forced otherwise you are simply hijacking the AGPL projection the modules authors might expect.And also, the OCA will never be able to check if some business is using a valid LGPL exception module they purchased from the OCA. This simple fact would make it possible the AGPL would be violated massively meanwhile.
Thank you if you read it through ;-)
On Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 1:57 PM Stéphane Bidoul <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:
Pedro,
Please don't assert things you can't possibly know about how other companies operate and why.
Best,
-Stéphane
On Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 3:32 PM Pedro M. Baeza <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:
So you have provided the perfect example for confirming the hypothesis that going LGPL, the number of contributions will be reduced: how can it be that Tecnativa, having only 10 persons, contributes 4x more than companies like Camptocamp/Acsone, that have 40/50 persons?
They develop on top of enterprise modules, which they can't share, so they don't contribute to OCA.
They develop more private things, as they are allowed due to the license being LGPL, so they don't contribute back to OCA.
And again, remember the big vendor lock-in you are imposing on your customers installing enterprise modules, being the vendor Odoo S.A., not you. And even not advertising that to your customers (by ignorance or complacency). That's the big win of Odoo doing that the conversation doesn't turn around this.
Regards._______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
--
Raphaël ValyiFounder and consultant
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
-- Dr.-Ing. Frederik Kramer Geschäftsführer initOS GmbH Innungsstraße 7 21244 Buchholz i.d.N. Tel: +49 (0) 4181 13503 12 Fax: +49 (0) 4181 13503 10 Mobil: +49 (0) 179 3901819 Email: frederik.kramer@initos.com Internet: www.initos.com Geschäftsführung: Dr.-Ing. Frederik Kramer & Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Torsten Francke Sitz der Gesellschaft: Buchholz i.d.N. Amtsgericht Tostedt, HRB 205226 USt-IdNr.: DE815580155 Steuer-Nr: 15/200/53247
by Frederik Kramer - 09:21 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
Hello everyone,
Thanks for all the insightful contributions shared so far. At Escodoo, we believe in a balanced approach:
-
As Ivan pointed out, “core modules, eg widgets, APIs, helpers” make sense under LGPL, enabling broader adoption.
-
And as emphasized by Pedro and Enric, business applications should remain under AGPL, ensuring that complete solutions stay open and collaborative within the OCA.
From a commercial perspective, we also recognize Daniel’s point: the Enterprise ecosystem exists and generates demand — and part of OCA’s own code base is funded by EE customers. For this reason, we see a hybrid model as a way to avoid alienating those who operate in that space, while still preserving the collaborative spirit of free software.
In short: LGPL for core/framework modules, AGPL for business apps. We see this balance as a way to respect contributors, attract new users, and integrate both CE-only actors and those working with EE in a healthy way.
Best regards,
Em sex., 12 de set. de 2025 às 12:23, Raphaël Valyi <notifications@odoo-community.org> escreveu:Hello, I think I need to share how I see the big picture.But first, let me exemplify again with an Odoo market I know very well. You may know that OCA/l10-brazil is the most active OCA repo (14k commits, 4000+ PRs, 150k lines of code, 70 contributors). Not because Brazil is an ERP eldorado but exactly because it is often pointed as the hardest ERP market (you need 200+ tax fields on an invoice line, a company doesn't use all of them but certainly some 60-80, a diversity of 80% companies use may be 180 of them. Same thing e-invoicing has 800 fiscal fields and is over SOAP...).Well there are now 50 official Odoo partners in Brazil, I'm pretty solid, the large majority is a scam of disposable noobs (half life = 1.5 year) who believed it was just about reselling Odoo EE. The vast majority just fail their projects like lemmings (they call us later) as soon as they venture outside of CRM or project management. As I follow the Github notifications I can guarantee you these 50 partners never contributed a SINGLE PR to the OCA. In fact it seems only people unable to do a line of code or use Google to get an overlook would partner. So the selection is pretty inverted (Dunning Krueger)... Instead, aside from Akretion, you now have Escodoo and Engenere who are serious people, CE only, and contributing many PRs to the OCA (outside of OCA/l10-brazil as well). But when I read this from Quartile https://www.quartile.co/en_US/blog/odoo-bits-pieces-1/essential-criteria-for-selecting-your-odoo-partner-as-an-end-user-company-120 let's say it matches my experience.I also know the French market very well as I pretty much started it 15 years ago (remember openerp.com used the open source ERP whilepaper I wrote at Smile on their frontpage for some 3 years). And I can tell you the quality of the official partner network dropped a lot. 10 years ago they were a well intentioned elite (before Odoo turned it into a "market for lemon", and now, aside from a few exceptions they are mostly a scam, mediocre at best. Less than 5% of these French partners contribute PRs to the OCA on a yearly basis...Overall, I feel Odoo is doing an unassumed transition from an innovative customizable ERP framework to a SaaS product. In fact they grew a bubble since the start. Since they had to rival with the $ 20 millions inflated Openbravo bubble, continuing with their 10x exaggerated SaaS business model from 2010 for Sofinnova (Fabien shared it with me, as the 2nd partner on the American continent, I helped convince Sofinnova, I protested to Fabien it was inflated but kept quiet as he suggested). Then came the "sorrySAP" crap in 2013, the invention of the millions of happy users worldwide, the $ 500 millions secondary market investments...Odoo themselves raised little money (on the primary market), less than $ 15 millions I think. In fact, since the start that is the partner network who fueled the growth. Then Odoo "pivoted" and dumped the "stupid partners who believed in that free software concept", made all the impossible early cases possible, did a crazy R&D... Remember that the 1st TinyERP web client didn't come from TinyERP themselves but was a 3rd party contribution (by Axelor)...In a way Odoo externalized the cost of the bubble to its partner network: "sign your project with the latest noob Gold partner who paid for its status and it will be like you will be doing your project with an Acsone or Akretion engineer with 10+ years of Odoo experience". Pretty much what they sold before Odoo EE was a product in itself...It worked for a while. It grew in quantity while dropping in quality. This is exactly what is called a "market for lemon" with a quality converging to zero as it was shown by Nobel laureate George AkerlofAt the same time Odoo has been improving its product a lot that is very True. Odoo is now quite well coded and is even pretty solid.Finally, I think Odoo is in the middle of a transition: It is very likely Odoo Enterprise succeeds as a limited SaaS product for micro-companies (like Salesforce, Netsuite). Success will obviously depend on the country. And I think it's quite nice if they meet this success while funding the Odoo CE core under the LGPL license. Much like Basecamp or later Shopify funded the Rails framework.What I find very "questionable" in fact is that they use the money from these partners they are fooling and their own customers to fund their transition toward an unassumed double agenda of a SaaS ERP for micro-companies. Indeed, Odoo will never assume the average quality of its partner network is crashing to zero.But this is my vision: yes the partner network will stick to a very low quality for years and years (read again the implacable mechanics of the Market for Lemon) to come and an Odoo Enterprise code and license which is not designed for customizations or extensions but solely to protect the Odoo own IP.And no, I don't see a bright future for this ecosystem of EE partners so that's why I suggest the OCA don't fool itself too much into trying to accommodate with the Odoo SA business roadmap.And finally, while I said all this, I do share the concern that AGPL is a bit business unfriendly and I do agree we need some LGPL in the OCA to make it easy for companies using Odoo+OCA to protect some of their IP.What is a good mileage? I don't know, maybe 20% LGPL and 80% AGPL would be nice.@Tom:About dual licensing again: it should be an opt-in option for the module authors but not forced otherwise you are simply hijacking the AGPL projection the modules authors might expect.And also, the OCA will never be able to check if some business is using a valid LGPL exception module they purchased from the OCA. This simple fact would make it possible the AGPL would be violated massively meanwhile.Thank you if you read it through ;-)
On Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 1:57 PM Stéphane Bidoul <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:Pedro,Please don't assert things you can't possibly know about how other companies operate and why.Best,-StéphaneOn Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 3:32 PM Pedro M. Baeza <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:So you have provided the perfect example for confirming the hypothesis that going LGPL, the number of contributions will be reduced: how can it be that Tecnativa, having only 10 persons, contributes 4x more than companies like Camptocamp/Acsone, that have 40/50 persons?They develop on top of enterprise modules, which they can't share, so they don't contribute to OCA.They develop more private things, as they are allowed due to the license being LGPL, so they don't contribute back to OCA.And again, remember the big vendor lock-in you are imposing on your customers installing enterprise modules, being the vendor Odoo S.A., not you. And even not advertising that to your customers (by ignorance or complacency). That's the big win of Odoo doing that the conversation doesn't turn around this.Regards._______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
--Raphaël ValyiFounder and consultant_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
--Marcel Savegnago marcel.savegnago@escodoo.com.br +55 16 99122-7649 A informação transmitida destina-se apenas a pessoa ou entidade a quem foi endereçada e pode conter informação confidencial, legalmente protegida e para conhecimento exclusivo do destinatário. Se o leitor desta advertência não for o seu destinatário, fica ciente de que sua leitura, divulgação, distribuição ou copia é estritamente proibida. Caso a mensagem tenha sido recebida por engano, favor comunicar ao remetente e apagar o texto do computador.
The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer.
by Marcel Savegnago - 08:10 - 12 Sep 2025 -
-
Re: Community Contribution Statistics
Hi Tom,Sadly, I am unable to come this year for some personal reasons. I am sure that we can make an online meeting if you are interested.Regarding the board, this has been a recurring topic in the community. What strikes me as odd is that while renewal is regularly encouraged, most former board members still run for re-election. In some cases, even when there were enough new candidates to fill the seats, the former members were all re-elected.
If we don’t intentionally make space for new candidates, it will be difficult to bring in fresh perspectives. I don’t have a definitive solution, but I believe it’s worth reflecting on how we can better encourage and support renewal.I know that there is some new faces on the board (like you this year). I hope this trend continues.Kind regards,El vie, 12 sept 2025 a las 16:52, Tom Blauwendraat (<notifications@odoo-community.org>) escribió:On 8/22/25 15:32, Enric Tobella Alomar wrote: > On the Board, I share your concern. At my first OCA Days (2018 or > 2019), the Board asked for proposals to completely renew itself. Since > then, few members have stepped aside, but some remain there. Maybe, at > some point, stepping aside could help bring new perspectives. What we have tried to do here in the past year is to form Workgroups, with the goal of diverting the actual work there. Nobody wants to be a Board member, but there are a lot more people who want to contribute to a small part that they feel enthousiastic about. This idea could be built upon. > Personally, I would like to see a mandate limit on the Board, PSC > formal election definition and a clear reflection of how each role is > decided, but it is my personal opinion. Will you be at the OCA days to join discussions on how to come from opinions to actual proposals that can be implemented?
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
--Enric Tobella AlomarCEO & Founder
by Enric Tobella Alomar - 06:55 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Request for Quotes: Improvement of the Odoo DB / sync with GitHub / New Frontend
Hello,The OCA needs to improve its tools (backend and frontend) on Odoo Community Edition.Two RFQ's have been issued:* RFQ2 (focus on back-end): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lMKRnCfO3B4ObrYyI1Ew7KnaIzp7rAF4/view?usp=sharing* RFQ3 (focus on front-end): https://drive.google.com/file/d/14bFzA4TFZohmrtRIN7Ow1_8Q_l5shxqn/view?usp=sharingOne company can answer to both RFQ's.The RFQ process is described here:The deadline for submission has been extended to the 30th September.Please share it in your network of experts ;)Thanks!
by Virginie Dewulf - 05:51 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
Hello, I think I need to share how I see the big picture.But first, let me exemplify again with an Odoo market I know very well. You may know that OCA/l10-brazil is the most active OCA repo (14k commits, 4000+ PRs, 150k lines of code, 70 contributors). Not because Brazil is an ERP eldorado but exactly because it is often pointed as the hardest ERP market (you need 200+ tax fields on an invoice line, a company doesn't use all of them but certainly some 60-80, a diversity of 80% companies use may be 180 of them. Same thing e-invoicing has 800 fiscal fields and is over SOAP...).Well there are now 50 official Odoo partners in Brazil, I'm pretty solid, the large majority is a scam of disposable noobs (half life = 1.5 year) who believed it was just about reselling Odoo EE. The vast majority just fail their projects like lemmings (they call us later) as soon as they venture outside of CRM or project management. As I follow the Github notifications I can guarantee you these 50 partners never contributed a SINGLE PR to the OCA. In fact it seems only people unable to do a line of code or use Google to get an overlook would partner. So the selection is pretty inverted (Dunning Krueger)... Instead, aside from Akretion, you now have Escodoo and Engenere who are serious people, CE only, and contributing many PRs to the OCA (outside of OCA/l10-brazil as well). But when I read this from Quartile https://www.quartile.co/en_US/blog/odoo-bits-pieces-1/essential-criteria-for-selecting-your-odoo-partner-as-an-end-user-company-120 let's say it matches my experience.I also know the French market very well as I pretty much started it 15 years ago (remember openerp.com used the open source ERP whilepaper I wrote at Smile on their frontpage for some 3 years). And I can tell you the quality of the official partner network dropped a lot. 10 years ago they were a well intentioned elite (before Odoo turned it into a "market for lemon", and now, aside from a few exceptions they are mostly a scam, mediocre at best. Less than 5% of these French partners contribute PRs to the OCA on a yearly basis...Overall, I feel Odoo is doing an unassumed transition from an innovative customizable ERP framework to a SaaS product. In fact they grew a bubble since the start. Since they had to rival with the $ 20 millions inflated Openbravo bubble, continuing with their 10x exaggerated SaaS business model from 2010 for Sofinnova (Fabien shared it with me, as the 2nd partner on the American continent, I helped convince Sofinnova, I protested to Fabien it was inflated but kept quiet as he suggested). Then came the "sorrySAP" crap in 2013, the invention of the millions of happy users worldwide, the $ 500 millions secondary market investments...Odoo themselves raised little money (on the primary market), less than $ 15 millions I think. In fact, since the start that is the partner network who fueled the growth. Then Odoo "pivoted" and dumped the "stupid partners who believed in that free software concept", made all the impossible early cases possible, did a crazy R&D... Remember that the 1st TinyERP web client didn't come from TinyERP themselves but was a 3rd party contribution (by Axelor)...In a way Odoo externalized the cost of the bubble to its partner network: "sign your project with the latest noob Gold partner who paid for its status and it will be like you will be doing your project with an Acsone or Akretion engineer with 10+ years of Odoo experience". Pretty much what they sold before Odoo EE was a product in itself...It worked for a while. It grew in quantity while dropping in quality. This is exactly what is called a "market for lemon" with a quality converging to zero as it was shown by Nobel laureate George AkerlofAt the same time Odoo has been improving its product a lot that is very True. Odoo is now quite well coded and is even pretty solid.Finally, I think Odoo is in the middle of a transition: It is very likely Odoo Enterprise succeeds as a limited SaaS product for micro-companies (like Salesforce, Netsuite). Success will obviously depend on the country. And I think it's quite nice if they meet this success while funding the Odoo CE core under the LGPL license. Much like Basecamp or later Shopify funded the Rails framework.What I find very "questionable" in fact is that they use the money from these partners they are fooling and their own customers to fund their transition toward an unassumed double agenda of a SaaS ERP for micro-companies. Indeed, Odoo will never assume the average quality of its partner network is crashing to zero.But this is my vision: yes the partner network will stick to a very low quality for years and years (read again the implacable mechanics of the Market for Lemon) to come and an Odoo Enterprise code and license which is not designed for customizations or extensions but solely to protect the Odoo own IP.And no, I don't see a bright future for this ecosystem of EE partners so that's why I suggest the OCA don't fool itself too much into trying to accommodate with the Odoo SA business roadmap.And finally, while I said all this, I do share the concern that AGPL is a bit business unfriendly and I do agree we need some LGPL in the OCA to make it easy for companies using Odoo+OCA to protect some of their IP.What is a good mileage? I don't know, maybe 20% LGPL and 80% AGPL would be nice.@Tom:About dual licensing again: it should be an opt-in option for the module authors but not forced otherwise you are simply hijacking the AGPL projection the modules authors might expect.And also, the OCA will never be able to check if some business is using a valid LGPL exception module they purchased from the OCA. This simple fact would make it possible the AGPL would be violated massively meanwhile.Thank you if you read it through ;-)
On Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 1:57 PM Stéphane Bidoul <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:Pedro,Please don't assert things you can't possibly know about how other companies operate and why.Best,-StéphaneOn Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 3:32 PM Pedro M. Baeza <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:So you have provided the perfect example for confirming the hypothesis that going LGPL, the number of contributions will be reduced: how can it be that Tecnativa, having only 10 persons, contributes 4x more than companies like Camptocamp/Acsone, that have 40/50 persons?They develop on top of enterprise modules, which they can't share, so they don't contribute to OCA.They develop more private things, as they are allowed due to the license being LGPL, so they don't contribute back to OCA.And again, remember the big vendor lock-in you are imposing on your customers installing enterprise modules, being the vendor Odoo S.A., not you. And even not advertising that to your customers (by ignorance or complacency). That's the big win of Odoo doing that the conversation doesn't turn around this.Regards._______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
--Raphaël ValyiFounder and consultant
by Raphaël Akretion - 05:21 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
On Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 4:47 PM Pedro M. Baeza <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:Stéphane, with the exact numbers provided by Enric, the correspondence is there.Correlation does not imply causation. I'll let you think about the many other reasons that can explain the data.I'll leave it at that for now as you have exhausted my energy for today and I have stuff to prepare for next week.I'm now muting this thread. Enjoy the weekend.-sbi
by Stéphane Bidoul - 05:21 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Community Contribution Statistics
On 8/22/25 15:32, Enric Tobella Alomar wrote: > On the Board, I share your concern. At my first OCA Days (2018 or > 2019), the Board asked for proposals to completely renew itself. Since > then, few members have stepped aside, but some remain there. Maybe, at > some point, stepping aside could help bring new perspectives. What we have tried to do here in the past year is to form Workgroups, with the goal of diverting the actual work there. Nobody wants to be a Board member, but there are a lot more people who want to contribute to a small part that they feel enthousiastic about. This idea could be built upon. > Personally, I would like to see a mandate limit on the Board, PSC > formal election definition and a clear reflection of how each role is > decided, but it is my personal opinion. Will you be at the OCA days to join discussions on how to come from opinions to actual proposals that can be implemented?
by Tom Blauwendraat - 04:50 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
Stéphane, with the exact numbers provided by Enric, the correspondence is there. If not, please explain the reasons for that discrepancy in the data.Regards.
by Pedro M. Baeza - 04:46 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
Pedro,Please don't assert things you can't possibly know about how other companies operate and why.Best,-StéphaneOn Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 3:32 PM Pedro M. Baeza <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:So you have provided the perfect example for confirming the hypothesis that going LGPL, the number of contributions will be reduced: how can it be that Tecnativa, having only 10 persons, contributes 4x more than companies like Camptocamp/Acsone, that have 40/50 persons?They develop on top of enterprise modules, which they can't share, so they don't contribute to OCA.They develop more private things, as they are allowed due to the license being LGPL, so they don't contribute back to OCA.And again, remember the big vendor lock-in you are imposing on your customers installing enterprise modules, being the vendor Odoo S.A., not you. And even not advertising that to your customers (by ignorance or complacency). That's the big win of Odoo doing that the conversation doesn't turn around this.Regards.
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
by Stéphane Bidoul - 03:55 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
Let's see if Community companies do much more PRs for user than Enterprise communities.I extracted the data for this year (January 1st to Today)For example, Tecnativa does 123 PRs for each developer they have, a similar number for dixmit (95). Other Community companies like akretion does 26 PRs per user.Forgeflow, that has a mixed background, has 29 PRs for developerOn the other hand, Enterprise companies does usually less than 20PRs per developer (16 Camptocamp, 12 acsone, 15 Moduon...)I think that numbers are clear.Kind regards,El vie, 12 sept 2025 a las 15:32, Pedro M. Baeza (<notifications@odoo-community.org>) escribió:So you have provided the perfect example for confirming the hypothesis that going LGPL, the number of contributions will be reduced: how can it be that Tecnativa, having only 10 persons, contributes 4x more than companies like Camptocamp/Acsone, that have 40/50 persons?They develop on top of enterprise modules, which they can't share, so they don't contribute to OCA.They develop more private things, as they are allowed due to the license being LGPL, so they don't contribute back to OCA.And again, remember the big vendor lock-in you are imposing on your customers installing enterprise modules, being the vendor Odoo S.A., not you. And even not advertising that to your customers (by ignorance or complacency). That's the big win of Odoo doing that the conversation doesn't turn around this.Regards.
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
--Enric Tobella AlomarCEO & Founder
by Enric Tobella Alomar - 03:46 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
So you have provided the perfect example for confirming the hypothesis that going LGPL, the number of contributions will be reduced: how can it be that Tecnativa, having only 10 persons, contributes 4x more than companies like Camptocamp/Acsone, that have 40/50 persons?They develop on top of enterprise modules, which they can't share, so they don't contribute to OCA.They develop more private things, as they are allowed due to the license being LGPL, so they don't contribute back to OCA.And again, remember the big vendor lock-in you are imposing on your customers installing enterprise modules, being the vendor Odoo S.A., not you. And even not advertising that to your customers (by ignorance or complacency). That's the big win of Odoo doing that the conversation doesn't turn around this.Regards.
by Pedro M. Baeza - 03:31 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
On 9/12/25 14:22, Daniel Reis wrote: > Let's recognize that at Odoo, the EE is what funds the R&D put into > the CE. > And even within the OCA, there is A LOT of code there that is funded > by EE customers. Question to all - I did not have the time, but did anyone already study Enric's statistics and manage to get some very rough estimate on which percentage of contributions come from "CE partners" and how many from "EE partners"? It's probably not possible to drill this down into perfect detail, but at the last OCA days I got a good idea by asking around which integrator has which kind of clients (Tecnative - all CE, Forgeflow - mixed, ACSONE - mostly EE, Camptocamp - mostly EE, ....) > The dual-licensing idea also seems promising to me, so I would like to > hear more opinions about it, if this is something the community agrees > can be a good idea. +1 to Sylvain and this idea. What I see is that there seems to be a "Team fully AGPL to defend open source values" and a "Team pragmatically LGPL + CE + EE", and unless there is a third option, the two can't agree. Last year I did a controversial talk on proprietary licensing in OCA, and in preparation for that I came across the Dual licensing idea. IMO it could be a genius solution because if you dual-license modules between AGPL and some "other" proprietary license, what you get is: - Anyone in the AGPL ecosystem can use the modules AGPL and be incentivised to AGPL-back any improvements, and not bother with licenses. - Anyone that pays the "other" license, -can- safely use the modules inside of an EE instance with no limitations, or build proprietary products on top; is ALSO incentivised to contribute back to the base modules that the AGPL camp uses; *and* in contrast with the situation when the modules would have been LGPL, OCA actually sees revenue from people doing that, which could go into: OpenUpgrade, laywer costs, paid employees that do license-policing, new AGPL developments, contributors..... you name it. Done smartly, it could even accelerate development of an AGPL alternative to EE. The talk stirred up a lot of fuss though because 1) some very staunchly open source contributors did not view the above as "free software" and threatened to leave the OCA if it came to that, and 2) the trouble is in the "you name it" part - who decides where the revenues go to? After facing heat over the above I dropped the idea, because that's what it was, just an idea - but here we are - if the alternative is that the OCA would split in two, maybe creative solutions are worth another discussion. -Tom
by Tom Blauwendraat - 02:55 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
Backbriefing, the key point I understood from the last two messages is:
Odoo Enterprise ecosystem is toxic, you shouldn't engage with it, and so the OCA should not care about it.
I understand there is frustration with Odoo's commercial practices and some of the things in the EE ecosystem, I also feel some of that.
Still, the part of the community that chooses to engage with Odoo Enterprise is as valid as the part that chooses not to.
Each of us is free to make our own decisions, and what works for me might not work for the person next to me.
Let's recognize that at Odoo, the EE is what funds the R&D put into the CE.
And even within the OCA, there is A LOT of code there that is funded by EE customers.
Without the EE ecosystem the OCA would be significantly smaller and weaker.
The OCA should work for all, not for some factions only.
Stéphane made a good point on how AGPL actually might be limiting the reach of the OCA and potential new contributors.
It resonates with my personal experience of what people tell me as reasons to not engage with the OCA.
And I've found myself in cases were I couldn't use or collaborate with OCA because of the AGPL license, which feels like a waste to everyone.
I personally agree that favoring LGPL licenses would contribute better for the OCA's growth and health, and have no concerns in re-licencing code I authored. I had few of those requests already and was OK with them.
The dual-licensing idea also seems promising to me, so I would like to hear more opinions about it, if this is something the community agrees can be a good idea.
Thanks
Daniel
On 11/09/2025 19:02, Raphaël Valyi wrote:
Hello Stephane,
thanks for these explanations.
Well I feel there is a missing piece here: you kind of tell AGPL represents a legal risk when mixed with intellectual property and Odoo Enterprise.
But let's face it the proprietary Odoo Enterprise licence itself is probably a much larger legal risk: miss a month of license payment and all your wonderful customizations are suddenly illegal... The OCA may not be able to sue you, but eventually Odoo SA or whoever will buy it may do it...
Honestly much more of a legal risk than having so split customizations between LGPL and AGPL derivatives...
Also you told us about Odoo partners and how they use to violate the license.Well let's face it: the Odoo partner network is now a giant market for lemon:whose days are probably counted before the matket finally understand Odoo partners grade has no value at all or is eventually just a mark of scam. I even believe Odoo knows it perfectly and is rushing towards the SaaS for micro companies while this network is collapsing (double agenda).
Take a look at the comments on the Underscode Odoo video 10 days ago:
We all know Odoo had a good reputation on the French market (probably the most mature Odoo market along with Belgium) even just a few years ago. But let's face it, the scam is being noticed more and more and now that the serious partners have been kicked out, I think there is no way back. An ERP without a network is kind of doomed to be a SaaS product for trivial cases.
Seriously, Acsone and CampToCamp are now kind of the very last serious Odoo partners I can think about... So no sorry I see zero potential for open source collaboration inside this new network of Odoo noob partners. Here in Brazil, it seems if the guy can prove he never had a GitHub account, he could become a Silver or Gold partner directly...
So while I agree it's better to license framework modules or very simple commoditized modules as LGPL, I still think what do these noob disposable Odoo partners, how they violate licenses or fail projects should not guide our policy at the OCA.
My 2 cents.
On Thu, Sep 11, 2025, 1:12 PM Stéphane Bidoul <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:
Hi everyone,
First of all, I want to say I have complete respect for authors to choose the Open Source license they prefer.
Yet, I am not convinced that using more LGPL would harm the OCA, let alone destroy it.
In general, using AGPL is a way to try and protect from proprietary derivative work.I use it myself in some circumstances for that very reason.
I note, however, that for that to be effective one must be ready to act upon it (by suing or other actions).In practice, there are plenty of license violations in the Odoo world (more on that below) that are never addressed.
Another very important aspect when building a community is attracting users, of which in turn a tiny percentage will lead to contribution. So, as any open source project which wants to grow, the first thing OCA needs is a massive amount of users.
It is interesting to examine what AGPL does from that angle.
One thing that is well known is that some enterprises completely ban GPL and AGPL out of fear of contamination to their intellectual property. So that repels a first pool of users and potential contributors.
Another aspect that is specific to Odoo, is that some long time open source experts like the OP worry about actual compatibility within Odoo Enterprise deployments.
Third, it is a fact that a vast majority of Odoo integrators commit license violations by making code that depends both on Odoo Enterprise and AGPL code.Many by lack of knowledge. Some (a minority hopefully) just don't care. But the vast majority of code bases from other partners I have looked at that use Odoo Enterprise have such incompatibilities.Genuine question: how many of you using OCA and Odoo Enterprise use 'manifestoo check-licence' in your CI pipelines? If you don't, try it, (bad) surprises are almost guaranteed.And that does not even count grey areas where manually created server actions or Odoo Studio code combine fields or logic from AGPL modules with OE stuff.
So in effect, what happens is that AGPL is creating trouble for integrators who use OCA and Odoo Enterprise AND care about licenses.Arguably those contribute a lot, but also constitute a big, partially untapped, pool of potential new contributors.And also importantly they are a source of potential funders via the partnership/sponsorship programme we are trying to build.
One could say that AGPL incompatibilities would force such integrators to use more OCA alternatives. Sometimes, yes, maybe.But in other cases, it has the opposite effect, and such integrators develop proprietary workarounds and therefore contribute less to existing OCA AGPL modules.
So yeah, as much as I would love to live in a world where everything is open source, I am pragmatic, and I reckon that a big part of the Odoo market, and therefore existing or potential OCA participants, is involved with Odoo Enterprise one way or another. And I believe that there is more to win by being welcoming to those rather than making life more difficult for them.
So it is definitely not black and white, and there is a balance between protection and attractiveness.But for these reasons, yes, I do believe that all in all, doing less AGPL would actually be beneficial to OCA.
Best regards,
-Stéphane
On Mon, Sep 8, 2025 at 3:47 PM Ronald Portier <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:
I think the people complaining about the AGPL making it difficult to make private, closed source, modules, do not understand or accept a thing about free software.
Of course if companies do not mind paying extravagant license fees, for software where they have no insight in the code, let alone study or modify the code, where they will become dependent on the suppliers of their software, where if they ever want to migrate or export data, they have to beg their present suppliers for access, by all means let them go for the Apple/Microsoft way.
The whole idea of AGPL is to build a community of suppliers, users, even end-users, sharing development, making life easier (and more affordable) for everyone, and where there is no support or possibility of hidden back-doors, vendor lock-in etc.
If the OCA where to go for default LGPL or dual licensing, it would be the end of the OCA, as an organization that stands for free and open software.
Kind regards, Ronald
On 08-09-2025 15:32, Pedro M. Baeza wrote:
Raphaël, indeed both points are correct, but referring to the first one, let me point that sending the message from OCA board members that the "good" license to choose is LGPL will make people that are not informed/don't think on the consequences/don't care to go to that one, destroying great part of the current OCA ecosystem value. I would only do the exception on the website one that touches frontend templates, for being able to protect your customer in case of website custom theme.
Ivan, please read my previous reasoning why base/tool modules shouldn't be LGPL, because if so, the modules of the second type will start to disappear.
Regards._______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
--
DANIEL REIS
MANAGING PARTNER>> Schedule time on my calendar.
M: +351 919 991 307
E: dreis@OpenSourceIntegrators.com
A: Avenida da República 3000, Estoril Office Center, 2649-517 Cascais![[Logo OpenSourceIntegrators.com]](https://www.opensourceintegrators.com/images/opensource-logo-2022.svg)
by Daniel Reis - 02:20 - 12 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
OCA should defend against such violations. That's why we signed the CLA, and it should be the difference between publishing your modules on your own in your organization GitHub against publishing inside OCA.About the "pragmatic" approach, we have the potential promise of possible contributions against the high risk of not having contributions at all because everyone does things in private, or that are reduced to mere tools, not finished business applications. And there will be more fights because the private implementations on top of the tools will provoke hidden interests of technical decisions going one way or another, or at least, a lot of maintenance vigilance work each time a change is done. Being all open, the change can be spread properly for keeping instantaneous compatibility.AGPL is usually described as "infectious", but I would say that more infectious is to put something enterprise in your instance:- It constrains you with all this license stuff.- You can't share the extensions done on top of them, not by the license itself, but because you may disclose secrets of the enterprise private code, having also a big legal risk/grey area. Only because of this you are losing a lot of contributions, as you can't legally contribute.- It has a very big vendor lock-in. While you pay, you have it. The moment you quit from paying, you are losing both the functionality, ¡¡and your data!!So don't let your Odoo instance be infected with this enterprise virus, and keep it free from it.Think a moment about it: all the money you are giving to Odoo S. A. in license fees in one year from one customer, can serve to fund the development of one OCA free alternative. A bit organized, we would have full enterprise replacement right now. From the Spanish Odoo Association (AEOdoo), we have already funded the development of VoIP, WhatsApp/Telegram and automation alternatives, and we will continue doing so. And I think this is good for all, because having this funded by other actors, the usual contributors won't need to spend time or customer funds on them and will be able to contribute things that benefit all. Because it's naive to think that if something is not in enterprise, people will sell enterprise or conform without it. So better to have it shared with fair rules (AGPL) inside OCA from again all to benefit from this collaborative effort.You can say: oh, "how selfish you are that you don't want Odoo SA to earn money", but they are the ones that have made the play to be "with me or against me" and "all or nothing". Some comprehensive services packaged another way would have a lot of acceptance, but they have done it so that you can detach certain things from others, and provoke by both the commercial techniques ("The godfather" OST playing now) and the product commercialization itself. I really tried to balance and distribute my incomes, but their strategy only gives me the crumbs. So they have got to not have anything at all from me.Just some food for thought I believe, and why I keep saying that going through that strategy is the end of the collaborative work.Regards.
by Pedro M. Baeza - 07:45 - 11 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
Hi everyone,First of all, I want to say I have complete respect for authors to choose the Open Source license they prefer.Yet, I am not convinced that using more LGPL would harm the OCA, let alone destroy it.In general, using AGPL is a way to try and protect from proprietary derivative work.I use it myself in some circumstances for that very reason.I note, however, that for that to be effective one must be ready to act upon it (by suing or other actions).In practice, there are plenty of license violations in the Odoo world (more on that below) that are never addressed.Another very important aspect when building a community is attracting users, of which in turn a tiny percentage will lead to contribution. So, as any open source project which wants to grow, the first thing OCA needs is a massive amount of users.It is interesting to examine what AGPL does from that angle.One thing that is well known is that some enterprises completely ban GPL and AGPL out of fear of contamination to their intellectual property. So that repels a first pool of users and potential contributors.Another aspect that is specific to Odoo, is that some long time open source experts like the OP worry about actual compatibility within Odoo Enterprise deployments.Third, it is a fact that a vast majority of Odoo integrators commit license violations by making code that depends both on Odoo Enterprise and AGPL code.Many by lack of knowledge. Some (a minority hopefully) just don't care. But the vast majority of code bases from other partners I have looked at that use Odoo Enterprise have such incompatibilities.Genuine question: how many of you using OCA and Odoo Enterprise use 'manifestoo check-licence' in your CI pipelines? If you don't, try it, (bad) surprises are almost guaranteed.And that does not even count grey areas where manually created server actions or Odoo Studio code combine fields or logic from AGPL modules with OE stuff.So in effect, what happens is that AGPL is creating trouble for integrators who use OCA and Odoo Enterprise AND care about licenses.Arguably those contribute a lot, but also constitute a big, partially untapped, pool of potential new contributors.And also importantly they are a source of potential funders via the partnership/sponsorship programme we are trying to build.One could say that AGPL incompatibilities would force such integrators to use more OCA alternatives. Sometimes, yes, maybe.But in other cases, it has the opposite effect, and such integrators develop proprietary workarounds and therefore contribute less to existing OCA AGPL modules.So yeah, as much as I would love to live in a world where everything is open source, I am pragmatic, and I reckon that a big part of the Odoo market, and therefore existing or potential OCA participants, is involved with Odoo Enterprise one way or another. And I believe that there is more to win by being welcoming to those rather than making life more difficult for them.So it is definitely not black and white, and there is a balance between protection and attractiveness.But for these reasons, yes, I do believe that all in all, doing less AGPL would actually be beneficial to OCA.Best regards,-StéphaneOn Mon, Sep 8, 2025 at 3:47 PM Ronald Portier <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:
I think the people complaining about the AGPL making it difficult to make private, closed source, modules, do not understand or accept a thing about free software.
Of course if companies do not mind paying extravagant license fees, for software where they have no insight in the code, let alone study or modify the code, where they will become dependent on the suppliers of their software, where if they ever want to migrate or export data, they have to beg their present suppliers for access, by all means let them go for the Apple/Microsoft way.
The whole idea of AGPL is to build a community of suppliers, users, even end-users, sharing development, making life easier (and more affordable) for everyone, and where there is no support or possibility of hidden back-doors, vendor lock-in etc.
If the OCA where to go for default LGPL or dual licensing, it would be the end of the OCA, as an organization that stands for free and open software.
Kind regards, Ronald
On 08-09-2025 15:32, Pedro M. Baeza wrote:
Raphaël, indeed both points are correct, but referring to the first one, let me point that sending the message from OCA board members that the "good" license to choose is LGPL will make people that are not informed/don't think on the consequences/don't care to go to that one, destroying great part of the current OCA ecosystem value. I would only do the exception on the website one that touches frontend templates, for being able to protect your customer in case of website custom theme.
Ivan, please read my previous reasoning why base/tool modules shouldn't be LGPL, because if so, the modules of the second type will start to disappear.
Regards._______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
by Stéphane Bidoul - 06:10 - 11 Sep 2025 -
Re: Licence question: using AGPL and Odoo proprietary modules on the same server
I think the people complaining about the AGPL making it difficult to make private, closed source, modules, do not understand or accept a thing about free software.
Of course if companies do not mind paying extravagant license fees, for software where they have no insight in the code, let alone study or modify the code, where they will become dependent on the suppliers of their software, where if they ever want to migrate or export data, they have to beg their present suppliers for access, by all means let them go for the Apple/Microsoft way.
The whole idea of AGPL is to build a community of suppliers, users, even end-users, sharing development, making life easier (and more affordable) for everyone, and where there is no support or possibility of hidden back-doors, vendor lock-in etc.
If the OCA where to go for default LGPL or dual licensing, it would be the end of the OCA, as an organization that stands for free and open software.
Kind regards, Ronald
On 08-09-2025 15:32, Pedro M. Baeza wrote:
Raphaël, indeed both points are correct, but referring to the first one, let me point that sending the message from OCA board members that the "good" license to choose is LGPL will make people that are not informed/don't think on the consequences/don't care to go to that one, destroying great part of the current OCA ecosystem value. I would only do the exception on the website one that touches frontend templates, for being able to protect your customer in case of website custom theme.
Ivan, please read my previous reasoning why base/tool modules shouldn't be LGPL, because if so, the modules of the second type will start to disappear.
Regards._______________________________________________
Mailing-List: https://odoo-community.org/groups/contributors-15
Post to: mailto:contributors@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: https://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe
by Ronald Portier - 03:45 - 8 Sep 2025
