Upgrading to Pimcore 2025.1: Legal & License Compliance Guide

INTRODUCTION

With Pimcore 2025.1, the Community Edition under GPLv3 is discontinued and replaced by a new Pimcore Open Core License (POCL).

For teams running Professional, Enterprise, or PaaS editions under a commercial agreement, nothing changes.

But if you are using Community Edition ≤ 2024.4 and plan to upgrade, you need to understand what this means for legal compliance.

At Factory, we performed the upgrade internally to test every scenario. The outcome: no issues appeared, and the process was straightforward. This guide shares our step-by-step approach so you can upgrade with confidence.

WHY THE LICENSE CHANGE MATTERS

The move away from GPLv3 is more than a formality. Under GPL, enterprises often faced:

• Risk of license contamination in proprietary systems
• Red flags in procurement and audit processes
• Extra compliance overhead and vendor approval delays

POCL removes these frictions with clear, modern rules tailored for business use. It provides source access and commercial flexibility, while setting structured boundaries around redistribution and SaaS use.

WHAT IS POCL?

The Pimcore Open Core License (POCL) is a source-available license. This means:

• You always have access to Pimcore’s source code for internal use, extensions, and modifications.
• It is not an OSI-approved open-source license, because redistribution and SaaS rights are restricted.
• It is designed to balance innovation with clear rules for commercial adoption.

In practice, POCL gives you flexibility for business use without the copyleft obligations that come with GPLv3.

STEP 1 – IDENTIFY YOUR STARTING POINT

Before checking licenses, clarify your Pimcore edition:

• Professional, Enterprise, or PaaS: no changes.
• Community Edition (GPLv3, ≤ 2024.4): you are affected when upgrading to Pimcore 2025.1 or newer.

STEP 2 – REVIEW YOUR DEPENDENCIES (BACKEND)

Start with your PHP packages. Run:

composer licenses

composer licenses -f summary

This lists all installed packages and their defined licenses.

From our Factory project, we identified:

• MIT
• Apache-2.0
• BSD-2-Clause / BSD-3-Clause
• GPL-3.0+ (Pimcore-related packages only)

Backend license summary

STEP 3 – REVIEW YOUR DEPENDENCIES (FRONTEND)

For frontend packages, install and run:

npm install -g license-report

license-report --output table

This outputs all packages with their licenses.

In our test, the results showed only:

• MIT
• Apache-2.0

Frontend license summary

STEP 4 – CHECK LICENSE COMPATIBILITY WITH POCL

POCL is compatible with most permissive licenses.

Compatible licenses include:

• Apache-2.0
• BSD-2-Clause / BSD-3-Clause
• MIT
• Boost Software License
• CC-BY / CC0
• Public Domain
• Mozilla Public License 2.0 (only the licensed part must remain open source)
• CDDL (only the licensed part must remain open source)

Not compatible with POCL when combined with Pimcore core:

• GPL, LGPL, AGPL (due to copyleft obligations that conflict with POCL)
• CC-BY-NC / CC-BY-NC-SA (non-commercial licenses)

Compatibility overview

In our case, the only GPL packages were Pimcore bundles. Once upgraded to Pimcore 12, these packages are relicensed under POCL, removing the GPL conflict.

STEP 5 – UNDERSTAND WHAT POCL ALLOWS AND FORBIDS

POCL grants you:

• Full source code access for internal use and customization
• Free commercial use up to €5M annual global revenue (or unlimited for charity/education)
• Ability to keep private extensions private, sell them, or share them as you choose
• Private forks within your company for customization and internal development

POCL does not allow:

• Public or competing forks of Pimcore core
• Mixing POCL code with GPLv3 code
• Offering Pimcore core as SaaS without a license
• Redistributing Pimcore core under other licenses

Audit rights: Pimcore retains the right to audit compliance. This is limited to verifying revenue levels and ensuring you are not using Pimcore in restricted ways (such as SaaS without a license). It does not involve inspection of your internal code.

STEP 6 – PRACTICAL UPGRADE NOTES FROM FACTORY’S TEST

When we ran the upgrade to Pimcore 2025.1:

• The migration from GPL to POCL for Pimcore packages happened automatically.
• No license conflicts occurred with other dependencies.
• Our audit logs were updated with composer licenses and license-report outputs.

For compliance, we recommend you do the same and keep results on file for procurement and legal audits.

STEP 7 – PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE

To stay compliant after the upgrade:

• Maintain a license audit checklist for internal reviews.
• Monitor your annual global revenue if relying on free POCL.
• Consider moving to a commercial edition early if your business is growing or if you need enterprise features.

POCL COMPLIANCE CHECKLIST

1. Identify your edition

• Professional, Enterprise, PaaS → No change.
• Community Edition (≤ 2024.4) → Upgrade moves you to POCL.

2. Review backend dependencies

• Run composer licenses.
• Record license types (MIT, Apache, BSD, GPL).

3. Review frontend dependencies

• Run license-report --output table.
• Confirm licenses (MIT, Apache).

4. Check compatibility

• Compatible: MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD, MPL, CDDL.
• Not compatible: GPL family, CC-NC.

If dependencies with incompatible licenses are identified, you must replace them with alternatives under a compatible license before upgrading to Pimcore 12. Otherwise, the upgrade cannot be performed in a legally compliant way.

5. Document and monitor

• Keep audit logs for procurement/legal.
• Track global annual revenue if on free POCL.
• Plan for a commercial edition if revenue > €5M or enterprise features are required.

TRANSITION PATH: FROM GPL TO POCL AND BEYOND

• GPLv3 applied to Community Edition up to Pimcore 2024.4.
• POCL applies from Pimcore 2025.1 onward. Once you upgrade, GPL no longer applies.
• Businesses under €5M global revenue can remain on free POCL.
• Beyond that, or when enterprise features/support are required, you can move to Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise PaaS editions.

This ensures a clear, future-proof path whether you stay free or move to a commercial plan.

CONCLUSION & NEXT STEPS

Upgrading to Pimcore 2025.1 under POCL is legally straightforward if you follow the steps:

1. Confirm your edition.
2. Review backend and frontend dependencies.
3. Verify compatibility with POCL.
4. Document your audit for future reference.

Our test confirmed: there are no hidden blockers. The main change is legal awareness, not technical complexity.

Keeping Pimcore updated is an important part of maintaining legal and security compliance. If your team needs support planning and executing version upgrades, our Pimcore Upgrade Service helps organizations update their Pimcore environments in a controlled and predictable way.

For organizations running Pimcore in production, long-term stability and security supervision are often handled through structured operational support such as a Pimcore Maintenance Service.