Re: powerEXT - Clarifications from the author

Aaron Bartell skrev:

That's a real bummer in my mind because in reality that means nobody can
really use it in the traditional sense of open source (i.e. my Ubuntu
operating system). Who could build any amount of in-house application and
also have the time AND ability to make it open source - just seems silly to
me. I would be curious to know if ANYBODY has actually done this and are
probably instead hoping ExtJS doesn't "lawyer up".

Not to mention the fact that the more I read about ExtJS the more I am
steering clear of them just because they don't seem to all be on the same
page internally concerning licensing - seems like a lawsuit waiting to
happen.

Ah, license heck.

The "traditional sense of open source" depends on the eyes that see, because the GPL was originally written in the late eighties and the GNU movement happened from there on. I was busy trying to study then, and in the university world, there were two kinds of machines. Windows/DOS and Unix. Notably Unix from different vendors on different hardware. Different hardware means no binary distribution, so you HAD to have source to be able to compile and run it. Hence the different attitude towards distributing source code versus binary EXE files which pervails to this day.

The GNU movement was technically very sound, but marketingwise a total disaster. "WE WANT FREE SOFTWARE" is not a good slogan for those who thinks in revenue. It took ten years before the Gordian knot was cut by renaming the concept to "Open Source" and saying "Hey, the MIT and BSD licenses are ok too" (these basically say - use what you want, just don't claim you wrote it).

There is _PLENTY_ of GPL'ed software in Ubuntu. Nothing wrong with that. Even the kernel is GPL'ed. This and Linus being a great programmer and organizator responsive to the community, is what I believe caused Linux to get critical mass.

But to answer your question about how to make Open Source software from an inhouse project? As i understand it, it is very close to having a project being developed in multiple physical locations where communication needs to be in writing for the archives and for those not physically present. You need to nurture the community - see how Eclipse has done it (people report in bugs because they believe it to be worth their time and efforts).
Personally I believe that the Apache license is good for Java developers (but only for Apache Jakarta projects) and the LGPL for the other projects to be best for us as it allows us to use the project releases as black boxes. If you do not touch anything inside you can use them. GPL is not good for Java programmers as the class loader mechanism may with good reason be considered linking which triggers the "your program must be GPL too" avalanche.

So I agree - a GPL'ed javascript library is just asking for trouble. Find another :)