FAQ About Bahmni License

Legal disclaimer:

This FAQ is provided for informational purposes only and reflects the personal opinions of the author. Nothing in this FAQ should be construed as (or is intended to be) legal advice. The Bahmni Coalition disclaims all liability relating to the information contained in this FAQ, which is provided on an as-is basis. Use such information at your own risk. Please consult your attorney for information regarding the interpretation or requirements of any open source license or other legal matter. 

  1. I want to make changes to Bahmni and use it in my organization. Does Bahmni License allow me to do that?

    If you are implementing Bahmni for your own organization (e.g., hospital or ministry of health), either by an internal IT team or by hiring an implementation agency, and make modifications to Bahmni Components, but do not distribute your modifications or permit users to interact with your modified version, (whether in a single site or multiple sites), you may choose to open source those changes or not and do not have to make the source code to your modifications available.

  2. We have implemented Bahmni in various places. We want to make changes to Bahmni and use it across the implementations that we do. How does Bahmni License affect us?

    • If you are an implementer and you have developed a new component that you use across multiple implementations, the modules you have added can be closed source. However, there is an exception in the case of any changes you make to Odoo. See “License terms for Odoo customization” for details.

    • If you are an implementer and you have made changes to Bahmni components that you use across multiple implementations including hosting in the cloud, the changes you make will need to be open source or you can seek a commercial license from us if you want to keep them proprietary. Please contact us for the terms of the commercial license.

  3. Can I use Bahmni as a backend and create modules that connect to Bahmni via APIs that I will redistribute either over the internet or as a downloadable product?

    As per AGPL version 3.0, you may choose to open source your code but you may also elect to not release your work under an open-source license.

  4. What do I have to do to open source the changes I/we make to Bahmni?

    Check out opensource.org for resources on how you can open source your changes.

  5. How do I know what license applies to the code that I’m modifying?

    See table in “What is covered under the Bahmni license” section in the About Bahmni License page.

  6. Can I build a module that gets plugged into Bahmni but Bahmni can still run without this proprietary module, does my module have to be also open-sourced under AGPL?

    It depends on which component of Bahmni you are building your proprietary module on top of. See table in “What is covered under the Bahmni license” section in the About Bahmni License page for details.

  7. I read that under AGPL license if a person writes additional code in Bahmni, to be AGPL compliant, they have to “re-assign their copyrights”? Is this true?

    No, Open Source Licenses do not require assignments of title to copyrights.