Yozons, I apologize for the tone in my previous mail. I've been following the Ext / GXT shenanigans for a long time now and have raised numerous issues with them in the past as well on their licensing terms and numerous license violations. The issues were either ignored or deleted from their forum. When you stated they have a clearer license compared to products with standard LGPL / EPL licenses it triggered a reaction from me without realizing that not all users are aware of the history and the way they operated. Even as of today they use the Creative Commons licensed silk icons without any attribution to the original author or pointer to the famfamfam site which is a blatant violation of the Creative Commons license.
They conveniently alter interpretations of their license to maximize how much they can extract from you and constantly alter their online license contents. A previous version of their license included the "indirectly" and "developer" interpretation in the license itself but I see they have now moved it to a different URL. I'm glad you were able to determine that they would need all your end users to buy a license and thus ruled it out prior to getting further along in your project. I'm pretty certain that a majority of the current Ext GWT users will also be in violation of this indirectly developer end user license requirement and will be told so if they contact Ext licensing. They carefully never state such things publicly and work behind a veil of deceit but as mentioned in your previous mail, you were told so when you contacted them. We only use GWT + incubator and I do not care which library you use. Just want people to be aware of what they are in for if they go with the Ext family of products. Martin On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 2:17 AM, Yozons Support on Gmail <[email protected]>wrote: > I'm not sure about him, but the license itself does not seem to make it > clear, but on their web site, they define a developer: > > "Are on a per developer basis. Each person who directly or indirectly > creates an application or user interface containing Ext components is > considered a developer." ( http://www.extjs.com/products/license.php ) > > The "indirectly" part is odd because there are many apps where you can do > some configuration that generates something that will appear on a web page, > and if that web page uses Ext, it would imply that person is a developer, > though only by an odd definition that is not used anywhere else that I've > seen before. Normally, a developer of a library would be the person who > actually writes the code that uses the interface/library directly. So, if a > user creates a "new calendar" to share with others, and the calendar that an > actual developer created uses Ext, it could be suggested by that clause that > the user is somehow a developer (indirectly). Same if it was a "greeting > card" or "social network site" etc. If they even define a link that appears > then appears on a page with Ext widgets also on it, they'd be indirectly > developers by that broad definition. > > It's odd, because the license itself reads normally and contains no such > overly broad definition of a developer. And while you may be able to argue > it, and even win in a court because the license itself does not say it and > normally the license would rule as the reasonable definition of a developer > would not include such users, but who wants to fight a legal battle where > there are no winners besides lawyers and there are alternatives out there > that would not put your product/company at risk? > > We were told by Ext that our application would likely consider all of its > users to be developers in their parlance because they are writing HTML code > via CKEditor (which has no such broad strokes), and since the page that > would show the HTML they developed might also contain at least 1 Ext widget > of some sort, then they'd auto-magically because Ext developers. Go figure, > but it does preclude our use since we can't have every user of our system be > considered a developer as we'd have no way of knowing. Even sys-admins > would configure items that would cause functionality to appear for users > with a given permission, and that would be shown on a page containing Ext, > so they'd now possibly be Ext developers, too. While it sounds untenable to > me, lawsuits are expensive even if you win, so why bother? That's my 2 > cents anyway since our lawyers said to pick an alternative rather than be > have to worry about it. Too bad since Ext is really pretty, and their > all-GWT GXT could be nice if in fact it's not too buggy as was also > suggested. > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Google Web Toolkit" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<google-web-toolkit%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/google-web-toolkit?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Web Toolkit" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-web-toolkit?hl=en.
