Alfresco has two editions of its products (sometimes called "networks"): Labs and Enterprise. It also offers a "Small Business Network" package through the Red Hat Exchange, but this is essentially a user-limited Enterprise version licensed on a "per seat" rather than a "per CPU" basis.

Those familiar with the difference between Fedora Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or JBoss.org and JBoss.com will immediately understand the distinction between the Alfresco Labs and Alfresco Enterprise editions. Both editions are open source and are available without up-front license fees. However, the Labs edition is completely unsupported while Alfresco provides commercial support for the Enterprise edition. In fact, you can't get access to the Enterprise edition without purchasing a support subscription from Alfresco.

The Labs edition is essentially the developers' playground. It may contain experimental features and community contributions. In source code terms, it can be thought of as the "daily build" or the "unstable build". Therefore, it should not be used in critical applications because it changes quite often. From time to time, functionality will be taken from Labs and placed in the Enterprise code line where it will be integrated with the rest of the product, tested, and officially released as a new supported version.

Initially, the Enterprise edition incorporated every feature available in Labs because the two were parts of the same code line. However, this has changed. The two are now separate code lines. There is no guarantee that a feature in Labs will ever make it to Enterprise. But if there is a good reaction to the functionality among Labs users, if the functionality is being demanded by Enterprise customers, and if the code plays well with the Enterprise code base, it is likely to be made part of the Enterprise release at some point. This means you should be very careful if you choose to put solutions based on Labs in front of your users. If they fall in love with a feature unique to the Labs edition and then demand commercial support from Alfresco, you might find yourself in a very tough position.