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By jns154
via talkingoss.blogspot.com
Published: Apr 28 2008 / 21:11
All this talk surrounding Ext JS is quite disturbing! No one seems to understand the GNU open-source license. The GNU OSS license is well suited for both open-source and dual license open-source/commercial. Every one keeps saying that Ext JS is evil and its licensing switch is immoral. Ext JS is NOT EVIL and its licensing switch is NOT IMMORAL. YOU ARE THE IGNORAMUSES! The GNU license demands that your software is also open-source, if it is released to the public! So open-source projects based on Ext JS can continue to use Ext JS as long as they too are open source, when released to the public! What’s so hard to understand about this? While it’s true that version 2 of the GNU license requires a FLOSS exception to be compatible with other licenses, version 3 of the GNU license is compatible with most other OSS licenses, including Apache.
Comments
dzonelurker replied ago:
It's a hoax.
jns154 replied ago:
What is a hoax? My title "The GNU Open-Source License, Ext JS and IGNORAMUSES" should have been more Ext JS friendly, but ...
The truth is, I'm sick and tired of all the open-source Nazis who criticize every one who’s trying to make a living!
dzonelurker replied ago:
I'm sick of fraudsters. Have a nice day.
jns154 replied ago:
Plase clarify. You're not making sense.
jns154 replied ago:
Plase clarify. You're not making sense. I'm going to assume you're one of the ignoramuses I'm talking about.
devdanke replied ago:
The people who are upset at ExtJs leader Slocum are not ignorant. They are know the situation. Slocum has long solicited and accepted help from the ExtJs community with the clear understanding that their contributions would be available to all ExtJs users under the LGPL. Now, suddenly, when ExtJs has become popular, he dropped the LGPL and replaced it with the GPL.
Almost all commercial users, no matter how big or small, will refuse to use the GPL. Slocum knows this. That is exactly why he switched to the GPL. It forces commercial users to pay for his commercial license, so that Slocum can make money. All the community members, who contributed to ExtJs and made it popular, will gain nothing from Slocum's commercial license.
Slocum tricked the ExtJs community into improving and popularizing the library so that he could make money from it now. It's the worst abuse of the OSS licensing I have see yet. OpenExt is a planned fork to ExtJs and is the community response to Slocum's dishonesty and greed. I hope that those in the ExtJs community who feel cheated by Slocum will support the LGPL OpenExt, which allows everyone's contributions to benefit all.
tsubasa replied ago:
Wow, an entire blog devoted to open source... with one post. Interesting also that it's on the front page of dzone yet the post has zero comments.
jns154 replied ago:
No comments because I forgot to make comments available to everyone. No it is so have at it.
Fusion replied ago:
1 post indeed. It's...bizarre.
jns154, I do not see any links to reference material -I mean section, paragraph, etc.- in your blog post. I was a bit disappointed because, as someone who does not currently have an opinion on this topic, I was hoping to learn something. Instead I found things like "GNU requires you to share your profits"...?
I understand why some people feel that your post is a hoax...maybe it is. It is a bit too reminiscent of "Leave Britney alone!"
hashmi replied ago:
The people criticizing the move have made very specific points, like Slocum's stand against a fork, and not giving the community a migration path during the switch to GPL. If he let the community fork ext under a LGPL license, the issue will be resolved for the most part.
So anyone taking sides should talk about specific points in the debate, instead of calling the other side ignoramus.
jns154 should have posted his comments on one of the many debates going around the web instead of starting a new blog for this purpose :)
hashmi replied ago:
http://www.dzone.com/links/open_source_vs_traditional_business_model_and_rom.html
jtheory replied ago:
I prefer "ignorami", myself, purely for entertainment purposes. But yes, of course all caps is required either way.
dzonelurker replied ago:
The plural is ignoramus, not ignorami.
http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookit.pl?latin=ignoramus
jeffjohnson replied ago:
It's funny, in my experience, those who have used the word ignoramus have generally had little business opening their mouths in the first place. This seems to be no exception . . . please know something about that which you are about to speak . . . before you speak it.
Had Ext gone GPL from the beginning, with a separate license for commercial use, I think few would have a problem. The problem lies in enticing users with LGPL, knowing it will gain a far wider audience in proprietary environments. Then when it has acquired a significant user base, switch to GPL, forcing those proprietary environments to do one of three things, open all of their associated code, rewrite all code dependent on Ext, or upgrade to a commercial license. That doesn't seem a little sleezy to you? I believe this is what dzonelurker is referring to.
". . . In the United States, courts have held that the purveyor using a bait and switch operation may be subject to a lawsuit by customers for false advertising . . . "
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