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!
Entries (RSS)
August 17th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
I’m glad someone has exposed these guys. I launched my commercial ATS around the same time (or a little before) CATS was launched. They have an inferior product on an inferior platform and were purposefully deceitful in their marketing. Other vendors have also called them out. For the price of their “hosting” fee for their “free” software, you can get a real Applicant Tracking System like BrightMove and many others that are packed full of real feaures. We actually offer a free version of BrightMove that has more features than the paid versoin of CATS. You do get what you pay for and since they really are not Open Source, you are paying for it.
David Webb, President
BrightMove.com
August 17th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
David, thank you very much for your response. It’s good to know that other people are upset by this on both sides of the story. I really do wish your company the best and honestly hope you crush your CATS competition. Seriously!
On another note, have you ever thought about opening your free version to open source? Have you thought through all the possibilities of growth and addon functionality that you could create for your product by allowing programmers from all over access a repository and add code to that repository? I’m curious on your thoughts on the subject.
August 18th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Interesting article - and one that I’m intimately familiar with - as I’m part of the effort to continue the free cats software. Yes this is a problem for ongoing involvement, and to some extent it looks like it’ll restrict developer participation.
Whilst I don’t agree with the licence - it’s for the original developers to define the license under which the code is released - this issue is in no way restrained to CATS - many ‘open source’ projects were highlighted last year and have now either changed the license - or moved to one of the new ‘open source approved’ licenses which aren’t a million miles away from the CATS license.
Take a look at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cpal_1.0 which was only released last year, and http://lwn.net/Articles/243841/ and http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/25/osi_socialtext_cpla/ for some of the discussions. CATS clearly falls into this category - and with SugarCRM also in there (until recently), CATS is certainly not the biggest player trying to push these licenses.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
This is ridiculous. I am Asim Baig, CATS Project founder.
here goes…
Great idea Chase. How about it David. Do you have the courage to open source your product??? Don’t bother, I already know the answer. I have used your product. I will leave the comparison to CATS as an exercise for readers of this blog…..
You obviously have no clue about CATS history or open source. Have you ever written code and then given it away for free? I did. I put my own money…hundred of thousands of dollars in building CATS. Then I gave it away for free. Over 30,000 downloads in 2 years and an installed base in 120 countries. All of the code. Every single line of it. Were we truly open source. Well circa 2004, when we launched the project, the OSI approved licenses were still up in the air. There were fierce debates on interpretations of GPL. what constitutes commercial use was a hotly contested issue then and still is now. I challenge anyone to explain how to interpret GPL and similar open source licenses in a truly web hosted (ASP) type setting. Most open source licenses such as GPL, MPL etc were written in days before the web. You can take GPL software modify it and use it sell a web based service. According to GPL you are not required to redistribute your mods. Thats the flaw GPL has. This kind of commercial use is exactly what was prohibited by the original spirit of GPL. It was to preserve the interests of the authors and the community at large. So open source licensing is a fairly complex issue. We didn’t have all the answers when we started. We wrote code, we gave it away. period.
We at least had the balls to do what you would never do in a hundred years David….give away your code. When you have done so, then call me or write to me. I would have expected you to have shown some professionalism for your competition when you wrote “I’m glad someone has exposed these guys”….WHO DO YOU THINK WE ARE … CROOKS RUNNING FROM THE LAW!!! We didn’t write or say anything about your company. Who are you anyways and why do you have such anger towards my company. What did we do to you. If you make a better product, thats great, more power to you. Go sell it, enjoy the fruits of your labor, but please don’t defame us. That’s not cool.
For the record, we didn’t use open source as a marketing gimmick. We gave away our code for free. We did not use a single line of code from GPL or any other open source project. We had no contributions from the community. We tirelessly supported our open source customers for 2.5 years at no charge whatsoever, day and night. We answered e-mails, phone calls, support forum. Not charged a single penny!!! Thats the spirit of open source Chase and David. You two obviously are showing your ignorance about CATS history otherwise you wouldn’t have written your insights.
Anyone is free to use CATS under the terms of CATS Public License which is a derived from Mozilla Public License. There are thousands of companies using CATS, modifying it internally, using it for commercial purposes. Opencats is doing just that. Taking our open source CATS and continuing with it. We didn’t and couldn’t stop them. They are following our license. and will build a community…..and continue… Can you say that about Brightmove David. How many lines of code did you and your company contribute to the community?
You said ….”They have an inferior product on an inferior platform and were purposefully deceitful in their marketing”
What a shame!
and before I go, I will give you some credit though for actually signing your name on the post. Others who have criticized us in the past did it anonymously (cowards!), so at least it was nice to see someone not using a pseudonym before posting their wisdom about open source and CATS.
I doubt that this posting will ever make it here, but if it does, don’t expect me to participate further in this useless bashing. Please educate yourself on a) open source movement b) history of CATS c) opening your mouth wide enough so you can fit your shoe in it.
Asim Baig
CATS Applicant Tracking System
http://www.catsone.com
August 20th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Explain how CATS was never open source to the thousands of recruiters that still use the software to this day. The people that use software by paid developers over the period of 3 years. The software that has been copied and used as inspiration for other projects but will never truly be replaced by. The only restriction was taking the software and selling it as a service, a major problem with any GPL license that a simple google search would reveal. Projects like Opencats.org continue, and you can to this day download my source code for your personal agency.
As far as Brightmove is concerned David, I find it interesting that you decided to launch a free version of your software with roughly the same limitations as we provided in ours — also completely free. I wonder if CATS didn’t rub of on you a bit as well over the years? Perhaps Brightmove should release their source code as open source? Awfully cynical otherwise. They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery — please enjoy any of my ideas that inspire you to better your software. As far as who’s is better, I’ll leave that to the customers to decide; but, I can say that I don’t need to drum up business by latching onto blogs attacking my competitors, the CATS converts from Brightmove speaks loudly enough.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
any rebuttal dave?
August 21st, 2008 at 12:05 am
Asim, you do have a point with Dave. He can’t really trash you about Open Source when he is not offering his code open source! What I would like to know from you is if your modified Mozilla Public License (Cats Public License) is really an open source license? And if so, how?