Why this license?

Open Personen is released under the Business Source License (BSL) 1.1. To answer questions about why we choose this license, please continue reading.

What is the BSL?

The Business Source License (BSL) is a license like any other that states certain permissions, meaning what you can and cannot do with the product.

The BSL basically allows you, or your organization, to do everything except to use it in production. You can still use it in production but you are required to purchase it from us under a different license.

The BSL also states that after a certain amount of time or when development costs are covered (either by paid licenses or otherwise), the product is released under the EUPL. This is not something we say casually, this is actually stated in the BSL license document.

Why not release it directly under the EUPL?

In the Common Ground community, the projects commisioned by the VNG, a municipality or any other public organization, are typically licensed under the EUPL. These projects, including the code development, are paid with public money from these public organizations.

Open Personen was initiated, developed and paid for by us, Maykin Media. Although we would love to license Open Personen under the EUPL directly, this would mean we would not get paid for the development.

Why not EUPL and charge for your consultancy services?

We really want to create a quality product that consists of a proper testsuite, documentation, easy installation experience and so on. We see some projects that are open source but are either of poor quality or lack documentation. Effectively, this means those open source products are unusable.

By creating a quality open source product, anyone can offer their (consultancy) services around it. We do this as well and we’re pretty good at it but some parties are just better in marketing their services than we are. We are really good at developing quality products and consultancy. Hence, we primarily will get our money from developing. Using the BSL allows us to do just that.

Can I use Open Personen?

Yes! You personally, or your organization can use this project for demo and test purposes or in pilot projects. If you want to use it in production, contact Maykin Media for an appropriate license.

Can I use Open Personen in production?

Yes, just not with the BSL. You can contact Maykin Media for an appropriate license to use it in production.

Why did we choose BSL specifically?

The BSL allows us to develop this project almost as an open source project and gives organizations and other developers a chance to try it out, use it for testing, look at the code and make contributions.

The BSL also enforces the eventual release of this project as open source, in this case the EUPL. This explicit promise is very important to us.

Can I contribute to Open Personen?

Ofcourse! Within the Common Ground community there are many pilot projects that require a product offering the Haal Centraal BRP API. These projects can benefit from your contributions.

We understand though, that contributing to a project that is not completely free to use in production is less attractive. We really hope that we can release the project under the EUPL as soon as possible.

What are alternative licenses?

For information about licensing arrangements for production usage of the Software, please contact Maykin Media.

Paid licenses will help the development of this project and will speed up the release under the EUPL.