The eXo platform™ is an open source project that intends to remain as such. In order to grow the project uses the community edge and potential on the one hand, and gives a GPL licensed platform back to the community, on the other.

Any developer is welcome to join the project. You either come with skills and ask for a very directed assignment, or bring in ideas and develop them for the project.

To make a living for ourselves and our developers a company - the eXo platform SARL - has been created. The company provides consultancy and support services related to the platform, and also sells commercial non-GPL open source licences for the platform. Distribution under a commercial licence broadens considerably the platform market penetration potential, and consequently, the related services market.

Therefore, there are two perspectives of return on your work:

  • Services.If some client wants consultancy, support or services work related to the part of the code you have developed, you are the obvious choice to provide it and to get paid for it.
  • Licences.TheeXo platform™ policy is to distribute part of its licence income. Quarterly 70% of the benefits from licence sales are distributed among the developers according to their input. By benefits or income we mean the accounting Net Income: roughly revenues after costs, interests, depreciation, amortization and taxes. The input from each developer is qualified according to a system of credits.

The credits.

If you commit code to the eXo platform™ you are automatically attributed a certain amount of credit. The amount of credit is determined as follows: Each task to be done is granted a credit value in our development tool. This way any amount of work is rewarded and you know before starting the credits you will be awarded when you have completed the task.

Evidently, in an innovative project as ours we cannot restrain credits only to quantitative criterion. Thus, important bonuses will be awarded for innovative and/or independant parts of code. It is impossible to quantify such bonuses in advance. Indeed, even portlets do not present the same degree of complexity. Therefore, the awarded credits will be negotiated case by case with the developers.

Example. Let us assume that the eXo platform SARL Net Income from Juanuary to March is 10 000 euros. If there are 3 developers with 20, 30 and 50 credit points respectively, they will receive 70% * 10 000 * (20 | 30 | 50)/(20 + 30 + 50) euros, i.e. 1400, 2100 and 3500 euros respectively.

Trust and transparency.

Of course, this system is based on mutual trust between all who commit.

TheeXo platform SARL will do its best to be as transparent as possible:

  • Financial statements will be released quarterly, even though the French taxes are due annually.
  • All developers and their achieved credits will be public information.
  • Any attribution of bonus credits will be published on our web site and the decision explained.
  • Any new developer introduced will lead to a public announcement.
  • The company will use preceding credit attribution as basis for new ones, when this is possible.
  • A discussion forum is available for all questions, remarks or reclamations.

We propose that all commiters abide by the following rules in order to promote the community policy:

  • The eXo platform™ uses the best practices available in the open source community. Therefore, every commit should include its unit test, and the code must follow the usual Java coding standards.
  • We trust you to commit according to your professional conscience and moral obligation.

Copyright.

In order to distribute the platform under commercial licences, the company needs the appropriate rights coverage. Therefore, we ask every developer to assign the company the copyright authority over everything committed. This does not mean that you sign away your rights: the eXo platform SARL simply receives a copy of your rights, while you retain intellectual property of your own work and can do whatever you want with it.

We are the only company that directly associates its developers with the generated revenues. In exchange for the copy of your rights you are credited proportionally to your input from the direct revenues. The more you work, the more you are payed. And the better the company works, the more there is to share. Moreover, the portal and content management markets, as well as the sales of commercial licences, lead to an expanding services market benefiting every developer.