ERPNext - Industry Specific Modifications - App for Sale

Frappe Framework App Development
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First off let me say I like ERPNext, I think it’s elegant and well designed.

Our industry requires some very unique modification of the ERPNext platform to be able to use it. The company I work for has been developing procedures and systems over 40 years to be a very efficient facility. And the way they do things is unique even within the industry. They would like to build their own system with the experience and systems they use. I suggested they use ERPNext since it would provide 80% of the system they need. Accounting/Customer The 20% that is unique for the industry and their systems would have to be developed.

So we could pay a developer to help us build this 20% and everything is good, right? Well, they have also had interest from other companies in the same industry that would like to benefit from those 40 years of system development experience. So for example if they invested $10,000 in a system and sold that system to 9 customers at $1,000 each to offset development costs.

I was trying to find if we developed an APP could that APP, that portion of the system be sold as an addition to ERPNext? I am sure it’s been asked before but I couldn’t find any info on that. It would awesome to sell that plugin/app with the rebranded erpnext cloud based service.

Let me know if there is any documentation or someone doing this with a plugin/app, would love to learn more about it.

Thanks,
Randy

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The ERPNext license is clear about the code, since your app will use ERPNEXT parts, your app will need be licensed under GPLv3 also, the license, don’t determine if you can or can’t sell, but determine that when you sell, if you sell, do you will need to give access to the source code for free. That’s the is what the license tell

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

2 Likes
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Hey, Max Morais DMM,

thanks for the clarification on that, so we could sell our module/app whatever you call it for use with ERPNext and per the license, we would have to offer the source code at no extra charge.

I think that would work out fine.

I really appreciate the help!!! Thanks,
Randy

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You may need to read the GPLv3 license text again. I believe that it means the source code must be made publicly available for download.

BKM

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You can try contacting a service provider about your project and they might be able to help you out.
Here’s the list of ERPNext service providers:

https://erpnext.org/service-providers

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honestly, in this case it may not be required, because I don’t think an app qualifies as being based on the frappe code, it just uses it. hence, it would only be required to make the frappe code freely available, but I’m not a lawyer, so I might be wrong.

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Thanks for everyone’s input, it’s very helpful!