A few weeks back I wrote what turned out to be a pretty controversial blog post titled “Was CATS Ever Really Open Source?“. The article was basically created due to CATS advertising themselves once as Open Source, but not providing a true open source platform and license. Along with the article I sent emails over to the Open Source Initiative requesting some feedback from them on this very subject. Here is what I got:

Russ Nelson

I’m not a lawyer, so this isn’t legal advice. It isn’t an official Open Source Initiative opinion, either. It’s just my expression of what Open Source authors expect of people who use their software. If you want a legal opinion, you should consult a lawyer.

Well, we don’t have a trademark on “open source”, however, you can suggest to them that they’re committing fraud (falsehood with the intent of gain). Open Source is merely descriptive, according to the
USPTO, but then again, it *is* descriptive of software with a certain set of freedoms described by the Open Source Definition.

Suggest that they’re confusing their customers. Confused customers either go away and don’t buy, or buy, are unhappy, and bad-mouth your product.

Michael Tiemann

As Russ has already replied, there is not much *legally* you can likely do, however in the 10 years of the OSI’s existence, naming and shaming has been a very effective strategy for virtually all cases. Your blog posting is a great start. I cannot promise to blog it, too, but it does look like a good case for reminding the world what open source is and is not, and that is certainly a position t

What’s the Problem Again?

All open source developers have the right to require attribution of their works. It can be a link, or a text document in the root of the files or whatever. A major problem with CATS is that they are requiring that you have the CATS branding on nearly every page, as well as a link in the footer. This creates more than just attribution, and becomes pure domination and control. That’s like Wordpress or Drupal forcing you to have their logos on all of your websites. That’s crazy!

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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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What? Really? After all of that effort of “secluding” CATS open source applicant tracking system from the Open Source world, it appears that CATS is making an attempt to repair it’s relationship with it’s former Open Source community. Including me! I was very open in criticizing CATS for bailing on Open Source after relying on it for the building of it’s software. CATS is reopening it’s Open Source Forums, so that community members can support each other in enhancing the open source side of the application.

They are however not releasing and supporting any open source versions of their software. They are just simply giving an avenue for those who still work with the open source versions. Although they are not going back fully to open source, they are giving effort to rebuild their reputation a little. You have to give some credit. But not full! This is however a big time for those CATS open source users and supporters out there.

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Some of you are asking for help finding the CATS 0.8.0 download because it is nowhere to be found. No worries. I kept a .tar file of it for safe keeping, just in case something like this came up. You can download it here:

CATS Version 0.8.0 Download

Here are the installation instructions:

1) Unpack the tarball into the web directory (/var/www/html,
/usr/local/apache2/htdocs, or similar). Make a symlink to
cats-0.8.0/ or rename the cats-0.8.0/ directory to cats/.
2) Start MySQL as the root user and create a new database and username.
mysql> CREATE DATABASE cats;
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `cats`.* TO ‘cats’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;
3) Make sure that the web server has permission to write to the
attachments directory.
# chown apache:apache cats
# chown -R apache:apache cats-x.x.x/
# chmod 770 cats/attachments
4) Visit installwizard.php from a browser to invoke the installer. *
5) Follow the on-screen instructions.

* Tip: If the installer does not load, check to see if there is a file
called ‘INSTALL_BLOCK’ in the CATS directory. Delete it to allow the
installer to be executed.

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I have been working with the CATS applicant tracking system over the past couple weeks. I found them because I was looking for an open source web based software for a staffing agency that I am servicing. I came across CATS, downloaded the application and installed/configured it on my server for my client and had them begin using it. I was so thrilled with the application that I wrote a blog about it called Open Source For Staffing Agencies. I was fooled. And apparently many other people have been as well. My client began using the application and started to find that CATS was limiting him in features, in lieu of him upgrading to their “Professional Version”. This drove me crazy! We have seen this before with Sugar CRM and ActiveCollab and countless others. People who use the “Open Source” tagline but are not really open source.

One of the key features in their 0.80 version is their “Career Portal”. The ability for applicants to submit resumes and apply to jobs and have their information interact with the application. For this new version of CATS 0.90, they took the Career Portal away. A classic sabotage of Open Source altogether. Here is a conversation in their forum that I found concerning this issue. A community member is discussing with CATS team members and their founder. Very interesting! I will warn you that when you read this, you will probably feel like sending hate email to the CATS development team and founder.

member - predictablestupidities

I checked with definition of Open Source at wikipedia after reading this message:
Used 10 / 10 daily Resfly™ automatic resume imports
Enter resume information manually or upgrade to CATS Professional.
And, this is new: Taking away features which were previously present in the Open Source solution - The Career Portal.
This is the second time I have came across such dilema with Open Source apps, SugarCRM was first to take everything to BUY NOW! environment.
I was so happy for the new release that without wasting any time, I upgraded to 0.90. But Now I feel so heart broken and so helpless. I might switch back to 0.80, at least its pure Open Source.

CATS team member

Open source simply refers to the availability of the source code with distributed software. CATS 0.9.0 is no less open source than 0.8.0.

CATS project founder

“Open Source” is an evolving model. It costs $$$ to develop open source apps. What business are you in “predictablestupidities”. How about “open sourcing” your services. I am sure you charge for your products and services, right? Lets try giving them out for free. And while you are at it, sell the service for a FEE too, and then try differentiating them. Then please tell us why would your professional customers pay for something then can get from you for free?

Believe me, it might even be therapeutic. Your will be less heart-broken once you share your valuable resources with say 10,000+ other companies to use.

We are trying our best to be fair to our users be they open source or professional. We are taking steps to SUSTAIN development of CATS. If we don’t do these steps, there will be no CATS, neither open source nor professional.

Lastly, let me remind everyone, its easy to write and distribute “utility” type applications. Releasing “Business” open source applications is incredibly difficult. There is a substantially small market for it, so developers are really not interested in building them. This is precisely why no one every wrote an ATS in the last 14 years, I have used open source software 1991-2005.

Having said all of the above, if anyone including you, predictablestupidities please do write to us and tell us why you can’t AFFORD to pay for the professional version. Make a case, and we will give you the professional upgrade for free.

beta tester

I (and a few fellow developers/sys-admins) have become a little peeved about the seemingly worldwide perception that “Open Source” immediately translates to “Freeware”. It just isn’t so, sorry. I’m also glad that CATS hasn’t gone the way of so many OSS projects and started embedding awful “targeted” advertising into their product to offset the dev costs, or gone to a crazy paid support model. It truly is a community supported and directed product. Congrats CATS.

This perception needs to be changed. OSS != Free, only free access to code. Amazing how many people want something for free. I really hope my local Porsche dealership goes Open Source soon if that’s the case

member - predictablestupidities

Open Source <NOT => Free! Got that and I agree to it. There are many companies out there who would like your professional support and services, as per there policies. I can’t afford that.

And then there are companies, like Sugarcrm who have 2 streams, 1 open and 2nd professional. In the open source model they don’t have restrictions like, your 10 count is done now upgrade.

My only concern is something which was working, (I’m not asking for something which you were already promoting as a professional service) why is now being restricted. Its more of a demo-ware now.

We are using majority of OSS apps like Joomla, OS Commerce, Drupal, Vtiger etc. etc. for various projects. I use Wordpress 24/7 for blogging. Only one product X-Cart, and I agree with there term has a model in which if you would like there support, you have to pay $100 to get in. Otherwise, it works fine. I think MySql, the heart of any good OSS app like Cats would also be a good example.

We work almost 10 hrs a day on Cats and we love it! We are currently redesigning everything around it and now we have hit a big full stop. What would you advise, if opting for professional is not an option?

CATS project founder

Well I don’t know what business you are in. When you say that you can’t afford CATS. Are you saying that you use CATS a lot, but don’t have the financial resources to pay for professional hosted account?

Using CATS 10 hours a day! thats a lot of activity. Are you an recruiting agency? Are you an agency that cannot afford $29/month/user. How many users do you have?

You have 3 options:

1 - If you are a profitable business (a recruiting agency perhaps), you should come to terms with reality and pay for CATS professional (onsite or hosted). I talk to a lot of recruiters who have thousands of dollars in placement fees but argue with me on why I am charging $29/month for providing them a product their business depends on. strange!

2 - Continue using the open source version and manually enter resumes after the daily limit of 10 automatic imports. 90% of CATS features are still there.

3 - Write to us and make a case for why you should get the Professional Version for free. We have made a decision to give the professional version of CATS to anyone who demonstrates the inability to pay for CATS but really deserves it. Call it our compassionate pricing! ($0)

beta tester

If I were you Asim - I would not worry - you have a very solid product at a very solid price.

Sometimes you have some jokers who come around and demand everything for free or at a cost or lower - with years of experience - we have come to let those kind of clients go - as they are just a big headache.

$25 a month a user is a very decent pricing for recruitment agencies who are doing even moderately fine. As you said, post on Monster or Workopolis costs thousands of dollars - so how come you can not afford to pay $25

member - predictablestupidities

Thank you for labeling me as joker etc. I’m not going to open up my accounts with you, i’ll just summarize its at the moment not possible to invest. When I’m capable, thats the first thing on the agenda as I’m very hopeful Cats team would release a great 1.0 version.

My only 2 problems are:
1) The CV entry was not limited in 0.80. Why we are limiting it to 10.
2) Career portal was functioning. If someone requires additional services definitely they should call in Pro services like yours.

Without these 2 imposed restrictions, I have no problem at all!

I’m well aware of ATS prices and CATS is very reasonably priced. I believe in the CATS system and I think in time it would be as pivotal as SugarCRM is for the CRM vertical.

I never intended to create a stir here. Asim, I have great respect for you and I think you have taken a great challenge.

Back To My Thoughts!

I hope you found this thread as interesting as I did. Basically CATS took away features that were in a previous version and basically had a pathetic excuse for it! Then the entire team began to “attack” the member who was questioning them on it. CATS gave the excuse that because they have costs, they need to be able to provide a professional version to cover those costs. I don’t think that anybody would disagree with that. But if you are going to call yourself “Open Source” and really use that term with your project, there’s no if and or buts about it. You cannot take features away from your open source users. Because they are doing this, CATS is sabotaging their open source community. This is a perfect example of what’s going wrong in Open Source today! If you need to sell more professional versions, then go get some real sales people and start going out their and selling it! Advertise to the Staffing Industry! When you advertise to the open source industry, you are targeting people who are looking for a complete open source application! Not a partial one! Do you get pushed into purchasing a professional version of Fedora? Or Ubuntu? Then why would you with CATS?

My Solution To You (the reader)

My conclusion was that I found that version 0.90 does not support the “Career Portal” which is one of the most important functions of the application. However version 0.8.0 (the previous version) does. Again unlike many other open source projects, CATS does not allow you to download previous versions of their application. I’m sure they did this on purpose. But thanks to Google I was able to find that Softpedia is providing the download for version 0.80. I installed it and the “Career Portal” function worked fine. So download the previous version and use it. DO NOT USE VERSION 0.90 BECAUSE IT LIMITS ITS FEATURES.

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