Dear Eric, Dear Witold Thank you very much for your honest feedback. First off, let me assure you that I haven't been thinking about many other things in the last three months :-) So I am fully aware of the consequences you've mentioned, which this step has on:
- costs being a factor in favour of a competitor's free product in smaller projects. - license complexity being a factor in favour of an alternative in free open source projects - "internal sales" between developers and managers being another factor However, I would like to invite you to see things also on the bright side. It is my strong conviction, that Oracle Database, and Microsoft SQL Server (and PostgreSQL, of course) are the best databases on the market. It is with those databases, that jOOQ adds most value: to developers by being fun to use, and to managers by getting a big ROI on developer productivity. If an Oracle Database license is not an issue to a purchasing department, then a much less expensive jOOQ license won't be, either (see LLBLGen Pro<http://llblgen.com/>). In fact, managers will now take jOOQ more seriously than before, when they might have mistrusted a free Open Source middleware product to whom they confide their most valuable asset: their data. When I decided to leave Adobe for my own venture, I had taken a strong decision in favour of jOOQ in general. - This includes a more self-confident appearance, which will again help developers convince managers to use jOOQ. - This also includes a road-show, which I am planning in the next months to increase brand awareness, as my talks at JUGs had been generally well-received. - This includes all the current social media marketing I've been doing through the blog, twitter, etc. - And, of course, I'm hoping to raise money through subscriptions to be able to continue providing developers with awesome SQL tooling, including but not limited to jOOQ itself. As stated in my announcement<http://blog.jooq.org/2013/10/09/jooq-3-2-offering-commercial-licensing-and-support/>, I don't see jOOQ as "just" a library. I see jOOQ as a vision, being the only platform on the Java market that aims for bringing Java and SQL closer together, without being distracted by the new impedance mismatch that other APIs (e.g. JDO, recent movements in some JPA implementations, QueryDSL, Microsoft LINQ, or Scala SLICK) have introduced by unifying query APIs across heterogeneous data stores. Imagine, if SQLJ had been developed with more visions and less politics, how popular it could have become! Imagine what other awesome things can evolve, given the discussions on this user group about BNFs, DSL API generation, possible JSRs evolving from jOOQ (e.g. a better meta data API: javax.sql.meta, or an annotation-based internal / external DSL mapping), the amount of SQL transformation performed by jOOQ... But to continue all this work, I will need some revenue. I would thus like to invite you to see this step as a step forward, from which everyone will profit. At Adobe, Roy Fielding was often cited having said that there is essentially no difference between commercial and Open Source software. This is quite interesting, as Adobe heavily engages in blending Apache software (Felix, Sling, Jackrabbit) with its Adobe Experience Manager. In the end, software business is about perceived and about actual added value. And I firmly believe, that both perceived and actual added value offered by jOOQ will increase in the near future. *tl;dr:* Nonetheless, my developer heart continues beating as before, and I will continue to strive to keep the Open Source community around jOOQ alive. It was not at all an easy decision to make this step, as I strongly do believe in Open Source. I am always open to such feedback, for which I want to thank you again. Lukas 2013/10/10 Witold Szczerba <[email protected]> > I am worried the licence change can be a huge stopper for adoption of > this great library. > In my company, we wanted to create some kind of application skeleton, > a full stack (back-end to front-end) and make it a public project (we > were planning the JUG meetings about it), so other > developers/companies could benefit and contribute. We have few similar > applications already created in a similar manner, all of them use JOOQ > instead of JPA. > > The problem is, the developers are the most ignored people in IT > business. Most of the time we have zero influence as, for example, > what database to use in the new system, because our customer already > has... Oracle or MSSQL and we can do nothing about it. Also, in many > companies, no one will allow to spend like EUR400 per developer only > because they choose some kind of, unknown for the majority, library. I > can hear the voices: do you really need this or is it just your > craving to use it? > > I am very sad to hear this huge licence change. Not because I would > never spend "x" times EUR400 for a project which is supposed to bring > like many times more profit (although there are projects which brings > loss), but because I know that developers won't be able to persuade > the guys who pay for it. > > I do understand your point of view, though. I am just not sure if it > won't stop/remove the adoption of this great library. It is great, but > it's "just" (no offense) a library. The "money" guys do not understand > this. They are going to spend like dozen times more for some totally > stupid licences for unnecessary products, like Oracle or MS SQL + MS > WINDOWS + MS[whatever] because other guys with nice suits work hard to > make them feel they need it. They will buy 3 super expensive servers > which could handle like 100x more traffic they will ever need instead > of one simple, but they will never understand why those developers > need to pay licence for something unknown, which is, bye the way, "so > easy" to replace for something well known (like Hibernate). > > Of course, there are also companies which will not think twice and > just buy the licences if the developers will request ones. But for > then to buy it, developers need to know it and they need to be > convinced. They can be convinced if they hear and read about this, or > about other projects using it, I am just worried there will be much > less "noise" about JOOQ after the change. > > At the end, I would like to thank you for this great library and I > hope I am wrong, and it will raise in popularity. I also hope I will > be able to create new projects in future which will use JOOQ, but the > choice is not up to me any more. > > Regards, > Witold Szczerba > > On 9 October 2013 22:27, Eric Schwarzenbach <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Lukas, > > > > Maybe you've already considered this, but let me point out one > consequence > > of this in the form of my own real life case: I'm currently working on > > library in which I am currently making use of JOOQ. My intention is to > > release this library as open source. My intention is also for it to work > > with any database. With this license change, I don't think I can do so. > So I > > will be seriously considering abandoning the use of JOOQ in this tool. I > > will probably have to. > > > > My company makes another product (not open source) which can work with > any > > database (it has a small module which makes a couple of adjustments for > > different database vendors...it isn't complete and we only add to if we > have > > a customer who wants to use a database we haven't yet added support for). > > This product doesn't use JOOQ but I've mused before that I might if I > were > > do the intial work today, and if I were ever to rewrite certain parts of > the > > system I would consider using JOOQ. So to speculate on the case of if the > > product did use JOOQ, this would complicate our licensing and we would > > probably have to charge an additional fee for customers that wanted to > use a > > commercial database. I can't say whether we would or wouldn't do that, > but > > I'm just saying this would be a complication and some level of > > discouragement to using JOOQ. > > > > This is also going to be deciding factor for many people looking for a > tool > > like this and making JOOQ or QueryDSL choice. > > > > I understand why you might make this change, and of course there are > trade > > offs.I'm not intending to criticize your choices, just to give some > feedback > > on how it may relate to your users' choices. It is with no hard feelings > but > > with some regret, that I suspect I will be working with JOOQ somewhat > less > > in the future. > > > > Best regards, > > > > Eric > > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > > "jOOQ User Group" group. > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > > email to [email protected]. > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "jOOQ User Group" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "jOOQ User Group" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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