VICIDIAL License and Internal Customization

[Op3r]

Hello,

I have this question from a client of mine who is a bank.

How does the licensing for Vicidial work, and what are the requirements for internal customization?

If we customize Vicidial for internal use and integrate it into our internal systems, are we obligated to share the source code?

Is it necessary to share the customization of Vicidial, even if we have no intention of selling it to others?

I tried explaining that we are not in any way obligated to share the changes we made without their authorization. They kinda told me that "that might be true if you got confirmation from vicidial guys itself" lol..

@matt am I correct on that assumption?

[mflorell]

The AGPL license that VICIdial is released under requires that web users outside of the organization running it be able to request the source code. So, if a bank is running VICIdial, and the only web users of VICIdial are employees or contractors of the bank, then the source code changes don't need to be sent anywhere outside of the bank.

If the company making changes to VICIdial is a call center hosting company, and other companies pay to use altered VICIdial on the hosting company's servers, then those outside companies are entitled to access to the altered VICIdial source code.

As for banks specifically, we have had several bank clients that have used VICIdial over the years. I have even had to go through multiple meetings with legal teams at some of those banks to go over the specifics of how Open-Source software works, and we've always gotten to the point where they are comfortable with using it.

[martinch]

I asked a similar question towards ViCiDial support and got a helpful reply from Michael...I just wanted to check with you Matt as my fork is on Github which is publicly available under APLv3...is that a fully legit? I haven't touched the code in a few years now as I didn't want to violate any copyright. My intention is to try experimental things out with ViCi and maybe mess with the UI and go into a GoAutoDial kinda vibe, UI-wise. I also wanted to experiment with newer Asterisk features too.

Thanks.

[mflorell]

As long as you release your modified VICIdial code under an AGPLv3 license, it's good!

[martinch]

As long as you release your modified VICIdial code under an AGPLv3 license, it's good!

Thanks Matt. Appreciate your support.

[Op3r]

Thanks for the reply and clarification matt.

One of the reasons why its kinda hard to penetrate large enterprise or companies that have risk group and security group departments is due to this kind of questions.

Hopefully this clarifies it and could be a turning point to start getting big businesses users.

[mflorell]

In my experience you really have to have at least one executive-level person at these large corporations who understands what Open-Source is and is able to advocate for it in C-level meetings. Most of the time that's a CIO/CTO, but I've seen the CFO actually be the lead on adopting OSS in enterprises before (usually for the cost savings of licensing and no vendor lock-in). If you can concentrate on educating this one person on the details and benefits of OSS, then it's much easier to get them to agree to give packages like VICIdial a try at their organizations, and that person can also help deal with the internal roadblocks like any security concerns that come up.