If the development of a specific technical tool in the heart of a community has a sense, it is that each person can use the tool in question and add their contributions, the development by a community of a business intelligence suite does not exist or does not exist YET, much as there is a huge effort made.
It is real commercial companies that are behind the various different business intelligence open source suites presented in this document.
These companies, apart from sharing – or fighting over –components developed by certain communities, try to find the best means of securing a return of their investment in this new business of open source editor solutions.

Apart from SpagoBI which distributes the entire software solution under GPL, the other editors (Pentaho, Jasper, Palo, Talend) have all chosen to make a free limited version available, and to reserve additional modules for the enterprise edition.

On top of these extra modules, the enterprise editions include editor support, with not only standard software anomaly support but solution implementation assistance. In any case, the editor support is guaranteed in the case of a problem, giving you access to editor expertise so you are not at a standstill regarding the project or software exploitation.

The support contracts also generally include an “intellectual property protection” clause, offering legal assurance which protects the client from any patent legal action that may be taken. A clause which is greatly appreciated in the U.S. and U.K.