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In version 24.4, the Open Dental license changed from open source GPL to proprietary. The new license did not affect customers. There was no change in price, support, database access, or how the software was used. It only affected a few programmers who were compiling the source code for some reason.

There were two main objectives when initially releasing Open Dental with an open source license. The first was to provide dentists with full access to their data. But this doesn't require an open source license. Instead, it just requires good documentation of the database tables along with read access to the database. Database access remains unchanged with the new license. The second initial objective was to keep the cost down. By using a free database, we were able to shave thousands of dollars a year off the cost of dental software. But times have changed. Maria DB forked from MySQL and then they built a connector with a less restrictive license. Proprietary software is now allowed to connect to the free version of their database.

The original advantages of open source are gone, and there are many compelling reasons to instead use a proprietary license. Being closed source allows us to put certain comments in the code to help us better organize and preserve institutional knowledge. We are also implementing some security strategies that we had been putting off because of the open source nature. Finally, AI really took off in a direction that nobody quite anticipated. We had concerns about AI bots consuming and training on our source code. Also, we can now build in some deep AI functionality that just wouldn't have been possible if it remained open source.

After years of careful consideration, we feel good about our decision to move away from the open source license. The database still remains more open than any other dental software on the market. Open Dental Software will always remain a family business with a very long term outlook rather than a short term profit motive. Open Dental has never wavered from its fundamental dedication to dentists.