Not just Open Source : it’s Free Software

More than Open Source to fight against Open Core

Shinken is a Nagios® – compatible tool that is not just open source: it’s more, it’s Free Software. It means that you can get the source like an open source program, but it also means that the project has a huge ethic : we’ll never allow this tool to be an open core application.

Open Core project means you get two versions of the product : a community one, and an Enterprise one. We think it’s not good for users, it creates a one-way path of innovation from volunteers to proprietary companies. In a community/enterprise vision, we can have a limited set functionalities : if a member of the community creates a patch that gives the community a functionality reserved to the enterprise version, developers can refuse it. It’s not acceptable.

Shinken will always be Free (as in free beer and free speech)

That’s why we use the AGPL licence : it’s better equiped to keep all development of Shinken available to ALL users. You can find information about it in the GNU site. AGPL is like the standard GPLv3 licence, but adds the Remote Network Interaction property : if you modify Shinken and make its services available to external customers, you must provide the source code. It’s like with the standard GPL, but extends to user network interaction.

So Shinken will never have Community/Enterprise version. All users can download the full version and do what they want with it. The project will be as open as possible. Every one is welcome in the Shinken community.

Looking for other features?

Full Freedom is just one feature of Shinken. See here for the whole list.