License

[ptonev]

Hello All,

Having in mind the arised situation I think that MyGWT library can be used (as this will be in my company) for internal use with its latest version always, i.e. all tools for maintenance support and internal tools will be written to MyGWT which has good performance and look and feel, but if you want to make a really good UI, I recommend to use FLEX 3 which is free but concerning the UI features I think this question is out of comment, of course you have to write stuff carefully due to memory problems that are in the process of fixing but it deserves the efforts. This way you will be alwawys using AJAX technology which will keep your backend clean and clear. If you want to see te effect of this licence change just compare the users before "licesing" and after that, the activity in the forums, this count has decreased significantly.

Best Regards,
Pavel

[huherto]

I have been thinking about this problem. I think that the right thing to do is to fork. I will help with support, bug fixes, etc.

--
Humberto

[silom]

I would like to create such fork. In fact I already created a project for it. But I didn't include the sources (trunk) yet, as I would like to get a clarification from Darrell or Ext JS first. It would be all LGPL and very open towards new project members and accepting patches and documentation.

[darrellmeyer]

You are free to fork 0.5.2, if that is something you would like to spend your time on. Ext GWT will be moving forward at a rapid pace, continuing to add new functionality.

I have 2 items for you to consider.

1. The Free Software Foundation has stated that because of the GWT compiler, any application that uses MyGWT will be considered a derivate work and subject to the requirement in section 4(d) and will need to provide source code:

Just to be clear, I put the question to FSF directly. I got permission from Brett to post his reply. You'll find it below:

On Sun, 2008-02-10 at 13:01 -0500, Alan Wood via RT wrote:
> The crux of the issue is that although the library is written in Java and
> your foundation's stance on Java is that the LGPL is 100% compatible with
> not shipping final source upon the use of it, MyGWT is meant to be used with
> a Java based toolkit called GWT. This GWT reads java source and cross
> compiles all the source together into 1 JavaScript (not related to Java)
> module that gets transmitted to the client and runs in the web browser. The
> argument is that when GWT does this, it creates a derivative work of the
> library and thus requires that the module created be shipped with source so
> that the GWT can in fact be used again to create a new version of the module
> with an altered version of the library.

Alan,

I think the argument you've laid out here is basically correct.

In the terms that LGPLv3 uses, MyGWT is the Library, software that
developers build on top of it is an Application (in the usual case), and
the Javascript that gets sent to users' browsers is a Combined Work.
Since the Javascript is being conveyed to those users, the developers
hosting it on their servers need to follow the conditions for doing so
set forth in section 4 of LGPLv3.

In order to comply with the requirement in section 4(d), it does seem
like those developers need to provide Minimal Corresponding Source and
Corresponding Application Source, as allowed in section 4(d)0. Using a
suitable shared library mechanism, as allowed in section 4(d)1, does not
seem to be possible here: it doesn't look like GWT has any capability to
make use of libraries that are already installed on a user's system.

I hope this helps you understand where these requirements are coming
from. If you have any further questions, or think I may have
misunderstood something about GWT, please feel free to get in touch.

Best regards,

--
Brett Smith
Licensing Compliance Engineer, Free Software Foundation

2. You need to consider that the CSS and images are not licensed under the LGPL. You will need to take a look at the license information which only permits use of the assets with their MyGWT components.

[damir222]

This discussion has all needed ingredients to go somewhere unconstructive
But I'll join because I need clarification in regards to license...

First, I want to state that I think paying developers for their work is very important, in one form or another. We all need money to live.

One important point is that some people use some open source software as a kind of insurance. That's why for example LAMP is a viable alternative to MS and Java worlds, while many inovative products by small companies are not.
What i'm getting at, is that companies go out of business or discontinue ther products, while people using these products want to continue using them as long as they chose.
That's where 'good' oss licences come in, if someone abandons the product, the comunity is FREE to continue using it, including fixing bugs and making improvements.


This brings us to the main concern i have with this license change, for which I ask for clarification. GPL licence cannot be used for developing proprietary software, but what about comercial one? What hapens if ext decided to drop support, or anything unpredicted happens? Will I/we be able to modify the source code? Will we, the users of comercial license, be able to join our efforts in maintaining the library and preventing abandonment?
Why should we trust you over other players, long term viability is as important as technical concerns when choosing a platform, and good intentions are not a guarantee!


Respect to darell, for showing us the way, but I'm concerned that nothing but the apache style license will be business friendly .... that leaves us right at the stating point regarding compensating inovative developers for thair great work.

bummer...

Damir

[gslender]

Originally Posted by silom

I would like to create such fork. In fact I already created a project for it. But I didn't include the sources (trunk) yet, as I would like to get a clarification from Darrell or Ext JS first. It would be all LGPL and very open towards new project members and accepting patches and documentation.

silom - my advice would be to create the project and sit back... if people come willing to help, then you have your answers... if not, then nothing harmed.

[WhiteRussian]

On how much I understand an ExtJS is a fork of Yahoo UI (which is distributed under a license BSD) If you do not want to use ExtJS under GPLv3 then you can use Yahoo UI
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/

[basb]

Hi Darrell,

What a lot of changes in just a few days.

As you now I am willing to pay you for all the great work (the least thing I can do is buy a licence). Still, the following is bothering me:

In http://mygwt.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1018 you said just a month ago:
"MyGWT will continue to be licensed under the LGPL for 1.0. The project will stay the same. I will still be developing and supporting the library as I do today."

What happened to that promise?

Regards,

Bas.

[silom]

Folks,

I decided to abandon MyGWT. The dependency in my project is currently relatively small so this is possible for me. For those who wonder why I wouldn't buy a commercial license I would like to remind you of this (from the license page):

...Each person who directly or indirectly creates an application or user interface containing Ext components is considered a developer."

I use MyGWT in a tiny piece of a much larger project, and the above would mean that each developer in this project requires this license, even if they are not using it directly.

I also abandoned my original proposal of forking MyGWT. As Darrell mentions (I was not aware of this before), the LGPL would be a problem for each commercial project. Also, Darrell used code and resources from many different places throughout MyGWT. Removing those dependencies would be a significant amount of work.

Putting a significant amount of work in a LGPL project that isn't acceptable for a commercial project led me to a new conclusion.

I have created a new project called GWTLib at http://www.gwtlib.org. I have been working for the past two days on the first widget for this library, namely a table component (that's what I need right now). So I didn't focus on the site and the pages are still almost completely empty. I didn't check in any code yet, but expect that I will have done so sometime this weekend. This new GWT library will be all Apache License 2.0. It will be written completely from scratch and will have therefore no relation at all with MyGWT or anything else. Please do not expect it to be as mature as MyGWT anytime soon of course. I will focus on the table component first, and then on a menu component.

Any help is highly appreciated and will be accepted immediately after the weekend. I first want to get the table component ready, so I need to focus .

[ushkinaz]

silom, that's brave, for sure )))
btw, did you check GWT Incubator and especially ScrollTable and PagingScrollTable? Probably it already has everything you need. Widgets in incubator are stable enough, at least comparable with gxt ones. The only problem - supporting IE only atm.