The newest version of SugarCRM is no longer open source, the core of the application remains open, but the user interface is now limited to paying customers.
“If you can’t implement the open source version of a product is it still open source?,” asks ZDNet’s Dana Blankenhorn. “And if its community is locked out, does a program really have open source value?”
This isn’t the first time SugarCRM has gotten the open source community riled up. In 2006, the company got into a fight with the Open Source Initiative folks over badges and licenses.
“Open source doesn’t mean free and was never really meant to mean free,” Sugar spokesman Martin Schneider said.
Right, the free as in freedom rather than free as in free beer paradigm.
However, who’s going to work on an open source project that you can’t actually run yourself?
