More cluelessness from ExtJS lead developer Jack on the GPL issue

Just stop the bitching now, it’s not constructive anymore. I think the ExtJS team learned their lesson.

Just stop accusing them that they just want to make incredible amounts of money, there is just no evidence for this.

Sorry, I’ve missed the change of the license to ASL2.

The main point of the post of course was “More cluelessness from ExtJS lead developer Jack on the GPL issue.” with “[…] wrap it up and sell it as their own. […] With no mention of us at all.” which is – IANAL – just plain wrong.

Out of several dozens of words, 13 were about money with money only mentioned once. No evidence? I thought Jack said the move was made because they are not making enough money, or am I wrong? And as I said this is sad, as the move will only lead to less money.

“[...] it’s not constructive anymore.”

I still think correcting misinformation by ExtJS developers about LGPL, GPL and licensing issues is constructive.

I wasn’t planning writing a third time about the issue, but Jacks comment I linked to is from today, in a thread I posted before, perhaps he should stop walking around spreading misinformation.

Good post. I’d agree it’s constructive if just to learn more about the positives and negatives of (and motivations for) various licenses, which I haven’t needed to consider much in the past.

Post like this are actually necessary. The Ext core team will not understand the point unless there is pressure from the whole community. No one listens if you don’t talk.

And I have to say that this whole discussion is giving me headaches. So, what is Ext? GPL? Is it viral in the server-side? Can I fork 2.0 or it is just not LGPL at all? Do I risk seeing 3.0 going AGPL? What are other open source projects that depends on Ext but uses BSD, MIT, Apache licenses doing?

It would help if someone could just summarize the whole thing. The Ext forum thread is just unbearable to follow right now.

IANAL – my opinion:

Best ask a lawyer, but from my experience with license lawyers (and I had some) there are very very few who know this stuff, especially the fine points.

- 2.0 is LGPL from my view, you can’t restrict the LGPL, it will break all restrictions
- 2.0 is therefor forkable (in the current situation I would only do this after consulting a lawyer), the one who does this could become very successful
- The GPL does not make the backend code GPL. There is no court decision, but this is far outside the realm of current discussion. See Microsoft using GPL Javascript libraries [1].
- I’m quite sure – IANAL – that there is no problem for intranets
- GPL3 should work with the other licenses, at least it works with Apache
- When forking you need to keep the original headers and copyright

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/expression/scripts/jd.gallery.js but they have enough money to buy the library completely, should problems arise

“Out of several dozens of words, 13 were about money with money only mentioned once. No evidence? I thought Jack said the move was made because they are not making enough money, or am I wrong? And as I said this is sad, as the move will only lead to less money.”

Please don’t put words in my mouth that I have never said. This was never about money, it was about *cleaning up* the Ext JS license. In particular, removing the proprietary license on the Assets distributed with Ext JS and additional restrictions imposed on top of the LGPL.

As of 2.1 our license is actually compatible with open source projects. Prior to 2.1, the mix of open and proprietary licenses made it very difficult to include in any open source projects. We were both privately and publicly bashed for this. Now we clean it up, and people (like you) with no knowledge of the situation at all make unfounded accusations that have no merit.

And if you are going to quote something said about the GPL, please don’t just take a piece of it, take it out of context and twist it to give your ridiculous post more merit. Thanks.

“In particular, removing the proprietary license on the Assets distributed with Ext JS and additional restrictions imposed on top of the LGPL. ”

As said before, you can’t put restrictions on the LGPL. Most people concerned with the topic thought that imposing restrictions on top of the LGPL was void from the beginning.

“This was never about money, [...]”

To quote ExtJS freely, it was because people “freeloaded” on your work and you didn’t get money for that and they would “[…] wrap it up and sell it as their own. […] With no mention of us at all.” Which as I said is illegal.

So it is about money. Not about open source. And as I said, it’s sad because the GPL will not help the project, not help Ext LLC, not help the community and not help open source (the myriads of other licenses out there).

“[...] our ridiculous post more merit.”

Thanks.

[...] are others [...]

[...] More cluelessness from ExtJS lead developer Jack on the GPL issue [...]

[...] weirder with their switch to the GPL for the latest release. The community is up in arms and the deluge of criticism and backlash is threatening to completely swamp the [...]

[...] More cluelessness from ExtJS lead developer Jack on the GPL issue [...]

I just threw out ExtJs out of my project.

Sorry, there’s an extra “out” in my comment – it should read “I just threw ExtJs out of my project”…

We are in the process of throwing out ExtJS from our work. It is such a letdown. I had switched directions from dojo in favor of ExtJS, but now again another switch. Looks like Tibco GI or YUI may be the way to go.