How is Bonita BPM "Open Source?"

I recently answered an interesting question on our Facebook page, and I thought it would be interesting to share it here on our blog too.

"Is there any chance to develop some SP features to community edition (i.e. LDAP synchronization)? Or the only way is buying it? If no, what's the Open Source means here?"

I often answer a similar basic question at conferences and other meetings with Open Source enthusiasts: "what does 'open source' mean to Bonitasoft?"

So here's what it means:

• First, you can find the source code on our public GitHub repository, fork it, build it, etc. It is available in GPL and some parts in LGPL. We also accept pull requests when we think they are interesting.
• Second, our Open Source version is fully functional: Bonita BPM Studio, Form Builder, Bonita BPM Portal, Bonita BPM Engine, APIs, connectors, etc. are all available to develop your processes and applications, free of charge. Many companies are actually using it in production, without paying anything to Bonitasoft.
• Third, we provide a Bonita Community website with a Q&A for support, a library of contributed projects for Bonita BPM, complete documentation, and many how-tos, videos, process examples, and more.

It is true that some features like "Business Data Management" (available in Bonita BPM 6.3), some connectors, and others like the "LDAP Synchroniser," are not available in Bonita BPM Community edition. There are some good reasons for this: sometimes, they depend on libraries that are not available in Open Source, and we can not distribute these with the Open Source version. Sometimes, they have been developed for customers only. Some features also need support and expertise and so are available only with our Subscription editions (as support is included).

Many other Open Source companies have this same approach to mixing Open Source and proprietary advanced features, for example RedHat, VM Ware, Automattic, Canonical, and Talend.

About the specific example of the LDAP synchroniser, it comes with our Efficiency Subscription Edition, along with many other features and examples that are aimed to help our customers to develop and go to production faster. You can of course create your own process to synchronize Bonita BPM users and your LDAP -- we provide a free LDAP connector for that, and a lot of Community members use it.

And then, why not be the first to share your sync process on our Community website with other users? That would be an awesome open source contribution!

And if you are interested in another perspective...here's what Bonitasoft CEO Miguel Valdes Faura has to say about Open Source.