Another ExtJS GPL thought – Should extensions switch to the GPL?

A few years ago superwaba did the same thing. Look how they played out – they died.

Most likely ExtJS will be history too. If not, then I would really be interested in why not. This would be interesting for open source business models. The current canon says this won’t work.

I’m developing web application “as a service”. I never distribute it anywhere. I’ve relicensed all my work to GPL3 without problem. You are not forced to give sources away if there is no distribution. And there is not.

[...] No signal, no noise. « Another ExtJS GPL thought – Should extensions switch to the GPL? [...]

Fear not. I think we’re all going to find this has been loudly blown out of proportion.

“Open Source License Exception for Extensions
Draft .26, April 28th, 2008″
http://extjs.com/products/ux-exception.php

@Chris: Perhaps I’m stupid – most of the time watching the world I think this is the only explanation that makes sense – but the exception does not change anything. As written in the post, liberal extensions do only help Ext LLC, no-one else. This is just smoke and mirror.

As predicted in the post “The best situation for the company behind ExtJS would be if extension developers stay with the LGPL for their extension (or switch to a more liberal Apache license).”

What would help is “[...] applications [...] for that we are working on another FLOSS Exception.” We’ll see.

But in the end this will not change the point the companies will not touch GPL stuff.

@Stephen: What do you think of the gwt-ext folks selling gwt-plus licenses?

try doing a search for “purchase gwt plus license”. you’ll find this obscure page which doesn’t seem to be heavily advertised on any of their main sites.

Are they under-cutting ExtJS?

@Stephan: (sorry for typo in your name in last comment)

@Chris: Not sure, GWT Plus is something additional to GWT Ext, not just something relicensed.

There is a lot going on with Ext and licensing, perhaps best to wait a month and see how the dust settles. Perhaps the internet and forum discussions started to change things – perhaps not and it’s just smoke and mirrors.

@Chris: NP, I’m used to that

http://extjs.com/products/ux-exception.php

notice how the list doesn’t specifically contain the GPL – they push more to the lgpl, funny how they want ux devs to write lgpl but it is not good enough for themselves
They want ux to be compatible with oem and commercail licensed ux.

extjs extension developers should release under GPL v3 just like they do – if the license is so good why are they making exceptions for it. There is only one word that i can see Greed. Ext was built off the back of liberally licensed software.

[...] version 1.0 of its SDK for developing GWT applications with the Ext JS library. Despite some controversy around Ext’s licensing strategy (namely the switch from LGPL to GPL), Ext GWT is currently one of [...]