Software licensed under the GPL

Many people wonder how a company that produces only software under the GPL may be successful.

There are many examples of GPL companies, starting with the Linux companies, such as Red Hat or Suse (now owned by Novell). Other well known examples are JBoss (now owned by Red Hat) and SugarCRM.

The software produced by these companies is licensed under the GPL. This means that the sources must be available and that any body may "fork" a modified version of the software. And there are indeed small or large companies that fork software produced by GPL companies, including  the Company.

The GPL companies usually have a community driven version and a Professional or Enterprise version of their software. They make their money by selling support contracts for the Professional version. They can do that, because the software is complex and not easy to maintain and their customers have other things to do than maintain such software. Hard to maintain does not mean hard to use, of course.

The software produced by the Company is used to build other software applications. There is a difference between the Professional version and the Public version. The applications produced with the Public version are automatically licensed under the full GPL, or under a license compatible with the GPL. This is not the case for the Professional version, and the applications do not need to follow the source and distribution requirements of the GPL.