Selling Piwik source code with edits/add ons

Hello,

I am in this midst of creating software and the Piwik source code would be a save me hundreds of programming hours if I could use it as a module. The software I am producing would radically change the Piwick code with extensive add-ons and additional features. It will be analytic software, but not web analytic software.

I know the GPL license allows me to commercialize and sell it, but I believe I have to provide provide the source code to those who purchase it which I do not want to do. Is there anyway around this? I want my final software (built with the Piwik module included) to be proprietary and commercial.

Thanks,
kaustic

Send email to hello (at) piwik.org and inquire about purchasing a commercial license.

The GPL is not the same as the LGPL, so even if you offered source, you may taint your proprietary code. I’m not a lawyer and I don’t know how tightly/loosely integrated Piwik would be in your proposed project. You can ask the FSF lawyer for their opinion.

I just sent an email and hope to hear something back soon.

It MAY be possible to do something with the API that let’s me achieve what I want and have Piwik acting as the ‘kernal’ of the web based application while not modifying any core code. I am just not sure of the limitation of the Piwik API. Is there any in depth documentation?

I would need to modify how Piwik recognizes traffic/visitors. I would need to trigger traffic not by using the code snippet that would typically be inserted in a website to monitor traffic but use another API to generate all traffic activity for Piwik to generate reports with.

Piwik is released under the GPL library and is using other GPL and LGPL libraries, therefore you cannot include or modify these files to include in a proprietary software.

Also, Piwik does not offer special license to make this possible; Piwik is 100% Free Open Source software.

If the API doesn’t do everything you need, please submit your ideas, patches to Piwik to be included in core.