[vancedailey]

Hello,
We operate an outsource call center. We have a number of clients that we answer calls for.
We would like to use open cats to hire Agents for our call centers.
The Agents hired would be our employees (not our Clients employees) and work in our call centers.

Does your license allow open cats to be used for this purpose?

The reason we ask is the following:
in exhibit B of the license you say: "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."

This sort of restriction is not something I have encountered in open source software.

Thanks,
Vance

[RussH]

Hi Vance,

unfortunately I can't be authoritative on the license, as it's the license handed down to the community from the original developers. However from discussions with them, and my interpretation - the intention is to prevent you from selling CATS as a hosted application to recruiters - as that's the market that the original developers are now in - and they don't want any competition in that space.

Therefore it seems entirely feasible for you to do what you're planning without any conflicts arising from the license.

[vancedailey]

Hello Russ,
Thanks for the response.
My impression is the same as yours.

I see that you seem to be the driving force behind establishing Open CATS.

Are you having any luck attracting any developers to the project?

Is there a follow on release in the works?

Best of luck,
Vance

[RussH]

Hi Vance,

I'm only a facilitator here - I was one of the 'community' cats users, and didn't want to see it disappear when it was removed from download and the old forums canned overnight..

However - yes there is some work 'afoot' to rework opencats (or its successor) in to a more stable codebase, and (eventually) to base it upon a MVC php platform.. The obvious problems are that we want to get it to a stage at which it can be considered a new codebase rather than a derivative work - and we could then release it under a revised license.

The discussions (and updates) have been taking place on the development mailing list, and the new code is in SVN..

All linked off this page;
http://www.opencats.org/wiki/index.php?title=Dev-Guide

The stable branch in svn has fixes etc for the 0.9.1 release and is pretty much identical to 0.9.1a in the downloads area - just got a few tweaks!
OSATS-1.02 is the work in progress...

Contributors are always welcome!

[vancedailey]

RussH,
I am glad to hear that the project is still alive.
I have concerns about trusting a key business function to the SaaS model.
Particularly in these difficult times not every service provider may survive.
I like to know I am in control of my own destiny.

Thanks for your efforts and the efforts of those moving the project forward.
Vance

[cptr13]

This is a late opinion on the matter, and I HATE to attempt to speak for the CATS folks, but I'm confident on this. In a nutshell, the license restriction is like this. CATS (OpenCATS) users can't do anything to MAKE money off of CATS (OpenCATS). That's a safe litmus test.

If you're using it for your own employees...it's ok. If you're using it for your clients...it's not. If you're charging clients for it...DEFINITELY not.

I gladly yield this to Cognizo folks but I'm confident this is the spirit of the license.

[Jos]

This is a late opinion on the matter, and I HATE to attempt to speak for the CATS folks, but I'm confident on this. In a nutshell, the license restriction is like this. CATS (OpenCATS) users can't do anything to MAKE money off of CATS (OpenCATS). That's a safe litmus test.

If you're using it for your own employees...it's ok. If you're using it for your clients...it's not. If you're charging clients for it...DEFINITELY not.

I gladly yield this to Cognizo folks but I'm confident this is the spirit of the license.

Yes, you are 100% right with your nutshell.

[netcracker]

More than reasonable requirements.
However, some dude tried to sell us some similar application as a service: http://qats.qareers.ro/ (sometimes https://qats.qareers.ro/). (note the "QATS" not "CATS" ).

"Their" application resembles too much to the Open CATS. I can't tell if theirs is any different, if it has any improvements or anything... Or maybe they represent CATS in Romania (qualitance.ro / qareers.ro / 86.121.28.61), and if that is the case they might be entitled to selling it.

Still, why is it that the "international" version is open source and the "romanian" one need paid for (quite expensive if I may add)? is it just because it is sold as a service? How much does it cost to use Open CATS from CATS' web server?

[RussH]

More than reasonable requirements.
However, some dude tried to sell us some similar application as a service: http://qats.qareers.ro/ (sometimes https://qats.qareers.ro/). (note the "QATS" not "CATS" ).

"Their" application resembles too much to the Open CATS. I can't tell if theirs is any different, if it has any improvements or anything... Or maybe they represent CATS in Romania (qualitance.ro / qareers.ro / 86.121.28.61), and if that is the case they might be entitled to selling it.

Still, why is it that the "international" version is open source and the "romanian" one need paid for (quite expensive if I may add)? is it just because it is sold as a service? How much does it cost to use Open CATS from CATS' web server?

A quick look;
- it's based on the version available here - therefore they're not authorative resellers. They've changed the name... removed the copyright information, looks like it's still in english, definitely broken the license..

Jos (who replied above) probably received notificaiton of a response to this thread - he's part of the official CATS company, he will probably investigate/report/escalate etc etc

[netcracker]

hello to all!

It should become clearer now that I am on a personal vendetta with the above mentioned QATS (Qualitance ATS - http://ww.qualitance.ro and http://qats.qareers.ro/). But that doesn't mean I'm wrong about them.

They will continue to sell your software with their logo on it and that to me is wrong, allthemore since they consider themselves a software company. Qualitance QBS's QATS now has a different login page, but after that it's still Open CATS. Did everybody notice the "OPEN" in "Open CATS"? As in open source! They should not be allowed to sell it!! I's sure you have your ways to test if they are running your software, and tiny little hints are the file and directory structure; take for instance files like http://qats.qareers.ro/INSTALL_BLOCK or http://qats.qareers.ro/wsdl/keyCheck.wsdl ... Qualitance QBS is not only a bunch of thieves but they are also incompetents... To my personal opinion, ofcourse.

Yes, I have my issues with them and you can call me a rat, but this http://qats.qareers.ro/ is only proving me wright.

I love Open CATS and Qualitance QBS are just scums. They rip people off and this is the least I can do.