Code Monkeyism

Programming is hard by Stephan Schmidt

April 26, 2008

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

Sorry, this would better go to twitter - but I’m not twittering.

Another thought. And not because I want to bash ExtJS, but because I’ve been interested into the GPL, open source licensing and the implications for over a decade.

IANAL. 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). The people who buy the OEM license from Ext can then use the extension. If someone releases his ExtJS extension as GPL, to be more “in line” with ExtJS, people with the OEM license cannot use the plugin, because it’s GPL (they can use the extension in a way that their customer need to download and install the extension on his own, but this is most often too cumbersome for customers. They are not allowed to distribute their commercial application with the extension or any code which references the extension).

The plugin writers do not gain anything for staying with the LGPL license, but Ext LLC gains a lot. It makes their OEM license much more valuable. If every Plugin writer switches to the GPL version, this could have an impact on the OEM sale. Especially because most enterprise won’t touch GPL software.

The best for a plugin author is to also go to a dual GPL/commercial license.

Very interesting situation.

Update: Very interesting

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Filed under: Dual License, ExtJS, GPL, LGPL

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About the author: Stephan has been working as a head of development and CTO. He has experiences in different technologies since 20 years including Java, Rails and Python. Stephans main field of interest is maintainablity and productivity in software development. Want to know more? All views are only his own.

Comments

sean

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

April 26th, 2008
stephan

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.

April 26th, 2008
Martin

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.

April 27th, 2008
John Resig on ExtJS, the GPL fiasco and open source community style at Stephans Blog

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

April 28th, 2008
Chris Scott

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

May 1st, 2008
stephan

@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).”

May 1st, 2008
stephan

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.

May 1st, 2008
Chris Scott

@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?

May 1st, 2008
Chris Scott

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

May 1st, 2008
stephan

@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.

May 1st, 2008
stephan

@Chris: NP, I’m used to that

May 1st, 2008
concerned ux dev

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.

June 11th, 2008
Ext GWT 1.0 Released | Ajaxonomy

[...] 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 [...]

July 10th, 2008

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