Ext Licensing: Oh, what a mess.
When things start smelling “funny” in the open-source community, they tend to go to the dogs with the haste of a drunk marching band.
Today’s drama is brought to you by your friendly ExtJS community. For those of you not familiar with ExtJS, it is a professionally made Javascript library that allows web application developers to create very elaborate desktop-like applications. Jack Slocum originally started this project as a YUI extension. That extension being open-source. He’s then regularly improved it by adding support for different building stones such as JQuery and finally a full-ExtJS solution, reaching ExtJS 2.0. For those of you who have managed not to fall asleep while reading my ramblings, you already know that I’ve used ExtJS myself, for instance when I created the ExtPHP wrapper.
Where this gets complicated is that Jack decided to license the assets under a different license, allowing him to retain all rights. I would like to make very clear that it’s his work and he can do whatever he wants with it. I am just narrating, here. He also added a clause that supposedly completely voids the LGPL license if someone attempted to use his work to create a derivative framework.
After a lot of moaning in the community - to the drum of “that’s a GNU license, man, the whole idea is that you cannot add restrictions!”, he decided to change the LGPL license to a pure GPL one, while retaining a pure commercial license on the side. I’ll bet he thought, at that point, “At least now things are clear.”
Well, that was only the beginning of a real sh*tstorm that threatens to cause a lot of damage to everyone involved, culminating -fleetingly, to be sure- with Sanjiv Jivan’s scathing blog post. Sanjiv, if I am correct, wrote a Ext “compiler” for the GWT library, called GWT-Ext - note that there is another project, apparently endorsed by Jack, that connects ExtJS and GWT. Sanjiv decided that he would fork the last LGPL release of ExtJS and start a new project. You may remember that Jack tried to prevent this by adding a provision in his license agreement.
The crux of Sanjiv’s beef with Jack Slocum is this: Jack created a great product, led people to believe that it was truly open-source when it wasn’t, and doesn’t understand open-source licenses. Jack is greedy. Now, the crux of Jack’s beef with Sanjiv is this: Sanjiv created a nice tool based on hits product, doesn’t understand open-source licenses and, oh, is greedy.
So, our protagonists are not talking to each other. This love story was consumed a long time ago. And potential “corporate” customers, like me, are revisiting the possibility of building their product on top of pure JQuery extensions and living happily ever after.
Now, in a move that would shame any seasoned soap opera writer, a new character enters left stage. And her name is OpenEXT. Contrary to what Dion Almar wrote, it is not a fork: the idea is to create patches that can be dropped on top of ExtJS. Now, I am curious: was Dion right when he posted his own piece on the topic? After all, things seem to change at a meteoric pace around here.
Anyway, stay tuned for even more implausible developments!
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Comments
Actually you missed something. My statements are for purposes of extreme exaggeration.
Why would I want to make my company leaders wealthier at the expense of my fellow programmers?
Seriously, people, are you all against making an independent living? Or do we all have to work for some IT department?
SF, you missed something here…
> As I work for a huge corporation, I must use free software so
> the corporate leaders can buy bigger houses.
Because it is now GPL, you must either pay for the right to use it OR open-source any applications that you create with it. So it is likely that you won’t be able to use Ext-JS any longer for your company projects.
Admin, you said…
> the LGPL license is invalidated by the use of ExtJS in a library
I am not a lawyer, but it is not clear to me that there is a violation (if the license is even valid). GWT-Ext is simply a “wrapper” (not “compiler”), or more specifically, a set of Java API’s that can be used to call the methods of Ext-JS. Note that GWT-Ext itself does not ship with Ext-JS, so it in fact is not actually “using” Ext-JS. All it does is let you write code in Java/GWT that calls the underlying Ext-JS routines.
Hi,
I’m not sure which part of the Ext 2.0.2 license you are referring to. The part in the Ext 2.0.2 license that talks about use in library reads :
“If you plan to distribute Ext in a product that will be packaged or sold as a software development library, toolkit or plug-in-based framework (”LIBRARY”), we require that you work with us to establish a specific license that is appropriate.”
As I mention in my blog, I do not package or sell Ext in GWT-Ext. Users are instructed to download and obtain it themselves. http://gwt-ext.com/download/
The basic point as it relates to GWT-Ext is really simple. I mentioned this in my response to Jacks blog but incase it has gotten buried there here it is :
http://jackslocum.com/blog/2008/04/26/ext-js-license-change-and-personal-attacks/
Infact in his original response (which has been edited out on his blog but can be found here http://www.gwt-ext.com/blog/04272008/jacks-response.pdf )
he changes his mind yet again saying :
“That’s fine, you are welcome to stay on Ext 2.0.2. I wonder what happens though when FF3 or IE8 is released?”.
The community cannot be held hostage to his mood on any given day.
So I’d like to wrap up and say there is no license forking that GWT-Ext is creating. We’re going by what the Ext 2.0.2 license permits per what was said and exchanged between us, and mentioned in the past on his forum. Regardless of what he says today or tomorrow, this will not change since he, as he so often admits, is not an attorney.
Sanjiv
Hey everyone,
What’s it matter as long as we don’t have to pay for anything! Everything must be free! Free, I say, free!
If you ask me for a dime, I will not use your software! As I work for a huge corporation, I must use free software so the corporate leaders can buy bigger houses.
I demand freedom to have everything for free.
Why do we need software developers anyway? There’s already enough software out there! Let’s work to rid the world of software developers!
Instead of the Open-Source Initiative (OSI) mantra, let’s have the Free From Software Developers Initiative (FFSDI) mantra.
Sanjiv, thanks for your clarification.
Indeed, there are two different situations here as I pointed out: one of your community members, “catplusplus”, announced his fork (OpenEXT) and you simply disagree with Jack Slocum’s replies to this announcement.
You, in fact, are sticking with the last LGPL version of ExtJS and, if I read Jack’s license agreement correctly, it claims that this is not something that can be done because the LGPL license is invalidated by the use of ExtJS in a library.
Unless I am mistaken, you are defending your right to use Ext2.0.2 based on your disagreeing with the original license agreement, thus creating, in effect, something that I am calling, for lack of better words, a “license fork.”
Hi,
I’d like to point out that I never said that I’ll be creating and forking Ext 2.0.2. I stated that GWT-Ext will simply stay at Ext 2.0.2 and provide the community and option of a LGPL stack.
If other entities are able to create a fork and legally back up the move, then the Ext folks can deal with them. Thats a separate issue from GWT-Ext.
I hope this clarifies.
Sanjiv
Community and commiters to the project are those who suffer from this kind of nutshellwar. I do not know the reasons why Jack really changed the license to GPL, but the collateral damage is imho enormous (http://goit-postal.blogspot.com/2008/04/extjs-when-open-source-kills-community.html). And I think that no-one will win here.
April 27, 2008 @ 9:32 pm
Robert, I wrote that “[the license agreement] claims [that] the LGPL license is invalidated.” I am not a lawyer either therefore I refraing from giving legal opinion. On the other hand, I am very curious to see what will happen because I do not think that this situation is extraordinary at al. Therefore, I can think of two potential outcomes: either everybody calms down and the whole incident just goes away quietly, which I am sure would be preferable for the parties involved; or this goes further, knowledgeable lawyer types get involved - haven’t heard from them yet! - and we gain some interesting OS knowledge.