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Hi Aaron,
the has been a lot of discussion about the licensing of EXT JS, most of
them because of general misunderstanding of what "Open Source" really are.
In peoples minds "Open Source" means:
1. You get the complete source code (right)
2. The author gives up all his intellectual rights to his work (wrong)
3. You can just use the "Open Source" without rules and call it your own
and/or license the whole work as properitary (wrong)
4. The author commits himself to deliver a life long premium support to
his work (wrong)
There is a lot of different "Open Source" licenses out there, but since
EXT JS and powerEXT is licensed under GNU GPLv3 I will concentrate on
that. GPLv3 has rules attached to the license, in general the license
means:
1. You get the complete source code.
2. There are no warrenty.
3. If you distribute the license with your own work, you have to make your
own license agreement compatible with GPLv3 (this is the primary idear in
GNU/GPLv3 Open Source - to share - and to build up strenght by sharing)
4. You have to leave any others copyright statements in your distribution.
5. Any non GPLv3 use/distribution of the code is prohibited without
permission from the author.
A quick comparison between major licenses can be found here:
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/licensing/licenses_summary.html
powerEXT has the same dual license model as EXT JS, that means as long as
you obey the rules under GPLv3 you can use the software as you like, but
if you want to build a commercial product on top of it, your customers
need a commercial license that can be provided in two ways:
1. Your customer buys a commercial license directly from the involved
copyright holders.
2. You distribute your commercial product with an OEM license obtained
from the sub-vendors and these licences are bound to your specific
produkt.
This is consistent with the following message I got from the EXT Team
dated 3. july 2009:
"Henrik:
as long as you fully comply with GPL v3, and its clear that all downstream
licensese are GPL v3, you can use Ext for free.
If you get to selling commercial licenses, either your users will need to
be commercially licensed for Ext or we can discuss an OEM agreement.
~ The Ext Team"
The commercial full ctr. OEM license is of course a "grey area" because
there is a lot of "what if"'s.
In a iSeries perspective and in the perspective of the size and value of
the delivery ctr. the commercial license price (aprox. 1.200 USD total
incl EXT JS), I find the discussion a little odd, specially if you want to
build a large mission critical application or do a large modernization
task, the question should rather be - "what ROI, support and development
security do I get elsewhere for initial 1200 USD and a 500 USD support fee
a year?"
Both EXT JS and I (later) ties up our payable premium support and
professional consultancy to our commercial license and I find that fair
because anybody can start out with a GPLv3 license and then decide if they
need a more professional support and/or foundation.
Any larger Open Source project has of course the purpose also to create
the foundation for a business all though the business model differs from
its more proprietary counterparts.
To keep prices down, volume is the key, because by creating volume you
create at the same time the basics for selling support, consultancy and
value adding products/applications and because support are given through a
forum, you build at the same time a valuable knowledge base for othes -
this is why the GNU GPLv3 license "leg" are there.
But people who dedicated works on an Open Source project needs, as all
other people, an income to sustain life and thereby the project and that
is why the commercial license and business model are there.
The customers value of a commercial license.
In most other Open Source project that runs under MIT and thereby without
any commercial license customers don't have a direct access to the core
development team, they may or may not answer a request in the forum or
they may or may not build in needed/requested features at core level, so
the customer may have to either make a special version or build such
feature on side of the core and thereby making change management very
difficult.
The typical main application that runs on an iSeries is an ERP application
and powerEXT is designed for modernization projects or new development of
commerce applications. Having access to key resources and special
knowledge in large projects is not only valuable, it's a must for most
customers.
The lifecycle of a modernization project will typical be 8-10 years and in
this 8-10 years we will see new OSi and RPGLE releases, new EXT JS
releases and new powerEXT releases, new hardware, new devices etc. and
also new client frameworks and standards. This means need of change
management, service and support during the whole lifecycle. I think most
customers are willing to pay a small amount to sustain that.
The dual license brings IMO the best of two worlds, the GPLv3 ensures that
people that wants to work with the software in a truely open source spirit
can do so and in the same times protects the project or part of the
project for being stolen by vultures, the commercial license ensures
customer support and project life.
Besides that, if people dosn't like license rules and that's the most
important, why don't they just go elsewhere ?
Regards
Henrik
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