The Applicant Tracking System provider CATS used some pretty interesting approaches in it’s beginning days to attract more users and down loaders. They according to the homepage of their website in 2006 and 2007 were “the first open source applicant tracking system”. The words “Open Source” of course attracted people by the thousands. But was CATS really open source, even though they were marketing themselves as such? Let’s first take a look at some screenshots of their homepage from 2006 & 2007 using the WayBack Machine. This shows us that CATS was using open source as a main term for marketing.
Now these are of course using the Wayback machine which can only show you saved html and css. So this does not include any images such as a header or main image of any kind that may have been used for advertising open source. Notice on the first image later in the paragraph where it says CATS Public License? Let’s talk about that next.
CATS Public License (”CPL”)
CATS claims that this license is a “simple derivative of the Mozilla Public License. It appears to be a little more than just a simple change. People are running into problems with this license with CATS on their so called Open Source versions because of a little clause inside.
I) You may not use the Licensed Software to operate in or as a
time-sharing, outsourcing, service bureau, application service provider
or managed service provider environment.
II) The following copyright notice must be retained and clearly legible
at the bottom of every rendered HTML document: Copyright (C) 2005 - 2006
Cognizo Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
III) The "Powered by CATS" text or logo must be retained and clearly
legible on every rendered HTML document. The logo, or the text
"CATS", must be a hyperlink to the CATS Project website, currently
http://www.catsone.com/.
Is This an Open Source License?
Here is what OpenCats.org - a group trying to reopen the project as a pure open source project, had to say about it. “Sadly, Exhibit 1 I) restricts one of the freedoms required to be defined as Open Source. This means that although OpenCATS is free (as in beer) and the source is ‘Open’, it is not officially Open Source. This project does not have the rights to strip the appendix.”
Can you see where i’m going with this? This is a huge problem. CATS essentially claimed they were open source, and then smacked you in the face with a license that was not truly open source under the Open Source Definition as stated with the Open Source Initiative. Exhibit 1 I clearly shows you that this license that CATS has distributed is everything but Open Source.
The CATS Public License does not meet the “open source” requirements of any open source license specified by the Open Source Initiative.
What Does This Mean?
A few things actually. But overall and most importantly it basically prohibits anyone from taking this so called “open source” code and distributing it and sharing it like open source usually does. CATS will let you distribute it for free like they have let catsone.co.uk, but they still force a copyright and a hyperlink back to catsone.com. Something definitely can and should be done about this. I have contacted the Open Source Initiative about this situation and will let you know there reply.
What Can Be Done?
What should be done is that because CATS was using open source as a means of attraction and marketing, that even though their license on older versions states one thing, they should be held accountable to an Open Source license for marketing it that way. I can’t possibly understand how anyone thinks they can get away with marketing their product as Open Source when it really is not!!!
My Letter to the Open Source Initiative
Dear Webmaster, I run a blog alled Chasesagum.com where I write reviews and helpful information on open source web and desktop applications. Earlier this year after writing an open source review on CATS (open source applicant tracking system), the CATS project went from marketing their software as Open Source to proprietary. It caused some debate on the blog, as I criticized CATS for making such a move. Since then a group in the UK have started OpenCats.org, to try and restart the open source project from the last free version that was released. The problem is that CATS had taken the Mozilla Public License 1.1 and revised it in such a way that it stripped Open Source entirely from it, yet they still continued to market themselves “Open Source”. I have written a blog article with full details that you can read: http://chasesagum.com/was-cats-ever-really-open-source
After reading this, I would like to get some thoughts from you on what can possibly be done about this! I’m sure there must be a law written somewhere that enforces groups to actually deliver an Open Source License when marketing their software as Open Source? Any feedback would be great and very helpful to my readers. Thanks for all you do!
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