If Pentaho is Open Source, can I just use it?

open-source pentaho
Suds picture Suds · May 12, 2009 · Viewed 36.4k times · Source

I see that Pentaho wants to charge me for their software. How can I get to the underlying Open Source software for dashboards to see what it can do without having to deal with Pentaho marketing folks?

Answer

Oli picture Oli · May 12, 2009

Most commercial open source editions have a community edition that the community hacks on if the license permits it*. Pentaho is no different from them and has a community edition.

In these cases, the "community edition" is not the same thing as the commercial product you would buy. You may find a lot of the gloss and even some, if not a lot of the features are missing. There's no support. Yadda yadda yadda. You get the picture.

*As others have noted, not all "open source" apps need to distribute the source code in the same way as, a GPL application would. Open source, in rawest forms, just means as a licensed user, you get to see the source code.

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