Can we use OpenEdx to build our commercial platform.

[Rupesh Sasne]

Hi,

We, a group of developers, are willing to build a commercial portal which would give a platform for teachers from various fields, in India, to teach millions of students across the country.

Since OpenEdX is an open source platform, we intend to use it for building our application.

So we just wanted to confirm whether edX has any policies against this. If
yes, then can you guide us what needs to be done in that case?

Regards,
Rupesh.

[David Baumgold]

Rupesh, that's great to hear! We at edX want to actively encourage other companies to build on top of the Open edX platform. You are welcome to do so, and to use it for commercial purposes. However, there are some legal restrictions that you must abide by, and the biggest one is that your version of Open edX must also be open source.

Most of the codebase is licensed under the AGPL license. Basically, this means that if you make modifications to the source code -- including building new features, fixing bugs, or even just changing the text on the page -- then your modifications must also be open source under the AGPL. Anyone who visits your website must be able to see the code that runs the website. If you develop using GitHub, like edX does, then this just means that you need to keep your fork public, and link to your public repository from your website.

Note that some non-essential parts of the Open edX codebase are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, which is less restrictive than the AGPL. The Apache 2.0 license does not require that you make your changes open source (although we at edX hope that you do so anyway!). For example, XBlock is a library that is licensed under Apache 2.0 rather than AGPL, which means that you are allowed to make closed-source XBlocks if you wish.

If you have more specific questions about licensing, feel free to ask! I also suggest that you search the edx-code mailing list for information about licensing -- these questions have been asked and answered many times before. You can also check out our licensing page on the Open edX documentation portal.

David Baumgold

Developer Advocate, edX