Community-source customer relationship management (CRM) firm SugarCRM has said it will join the GPL Version 3 brigade with Sugar Community Edition 5.0, scheduled for general availability in September and for beta-testing in the next fortnight.

The Sugar support is a big boost to GPL as the company is not only a significant application provider but also because Sugar’s previous licensing terms and conditions had been criticised by many open-source advocates.

“We’ve been following the GPL 3 for about a year now and it’s the most modern open-source software licence,” said Clint Oram, SugarCRM European general manager.

“The previous version was 16 years old and with the new version we like the patent protection and, more than anything else, the fact that by adopting the licence we could take advantage of the larger open-source development community.”

GPL 3 has had its share of controversy in the build-up to its release a month ago with some experts suggesting the new licence added unnecessary complexity. Linus Torvalds has been prominent among those disputing elements but uptake so far has been solid.

Separately, Oram said that the opening of Sugar’s European offices in Dublin earlier this summer has helped it get closer to customers and prospects.

“Dublin’s the emerging IT hub of Europe,” he added.