Matthew Garrett ([info]mjg59) wrote,
@ 2008-03-28 15:33:00
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Ext JS is some sort of Javascript framework stuff. I know nothing whatsoever about Javascript, but what interested me was the slightly odd license. If you're a non-profit you can have it under the LGPL 3.0, but if you want to use it in a library then you have to buy a commercial license for them. This seems at odds with my understanding of the LGPL, but anyway. I'm a non-profit, so I've downloaded it under the LGPL. Under my LGPL rights, I've put it up for download here. If you want to use it in a library, feel free to do so as long as you abide by version 3.0 of the LGPL.

Thanks to Decklin for pointing this out.


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Disappointing
[info]jackvslocum
2008-03-29 03:16 am UTC (link)
I think before making such a post you should understand a little of the history behind the Ext JS...

The library was started on my blog around 2 years ago as extension to the YUI Library. For the first 8 months of the project that I worked on it full-time, I did so for little to no compensation. I did it out of a passion and love for what I was doing. Since I have a family with 3 children that was not going to work forever. With the growing popularity of Ext, I decided to form Ext JS, LLC to offer support and commercial licenses. At that time there it was discussed, publicly, in our community forums, about making the library only available under a commercial license for commercial use. I was leaning towards offering it under GPL and a commercial license.

After much discussion we decided instead to release it under a license that was less restrictive than the GPL and one that offered the most people the ability to continue using it as they were. At the same time, I was forming a business and as a business, I needed to ensure that others would not be able to just take the library that I had invested so much time, effort and most of my savings into and create libraries that would compete with us using our own work.

That's where the Ext license was born. It's purpose was to serve as an intermediate license that all our code would be distributed under. That license would have the ability to grant additional terms based on the criteria set forth in it. We had two goals for this license: a) make it easy to understand (we didn't want to send everyone to an attorney in order to use the library) and b) if it did go to an attorney try to give it terms that an attorney will be familiar with. I believe the Ext license accomplishes both those things. It's easy to read, and the open source terms it grants are a very common open source license, the LGPL. Our I.P. council is very well known and very well respected and I imagine they gave us sound advice in helping us achieve this goal.

Despite my effort to keep Ext freely available to as many people as possible it seems that some people in the open source community (like you) would be happier instead with a GPL/commercial license model which would be more standard and "acceptable" but much more restrictive than our current license. Maybe you don't agree with that choice, but that was our choice. Our goal was to make a license that the developers that use Ext are happy with not someone who (in your own words) knows "nothing whatsoever about Javascript" and will probably never use Ext.

In the end though, you can NOT remove our license file from the distribution of our copyrighted software and replace it with your own. At best it is unethical, at worst it is endorsing copyright infringement.

Have a nice day and best of luck,

Jack Slocum
Ext JS Founder

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Re: Disappointing
[info]mjg59
2008-03-29 03:58 am UTC (link)
You can release it under the terms of the LGPL (like your license claims), in which case I can redistribute it under the LGPL. Or you can choose not to distribute it under the LGPL (which is not what your license claims), in which case I cannot. As a copyright holder, the choice is entirely up to you - and you're welcome to tell me that you have not provided me with the code under the license that you claimed to. But if it is provided under the terms of the LGPL, then the LGPL explicitly allows me to provide it to anyone else under the terms of the LGPL.

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Re: Disappointing
[info]jackvslocum
2008-03-29 05:55 pm UTC (link)
Hi Matthew,

Thanks for your response. I believe if you read our license in it's entirety you will see the issue with your distribution. In particular, these lines make it very clear:

"If you plan to distribute Ext in a product that will be packaged or sold as a software development library, toolkit or plug-in-based framework (LIBRARY), we require that you work with us to establish a specific license that is appropriate. Use of the open source license terms in a LIBRARY is not permitted without explicit permission."

Because of this restriction, any point you have made about rights granted to you by the LGPL are invalid since we have explicitly denied you the right to use Ext under the open source LGPL license because you are distributing a LIBRARY. As stated above, this is why we have an intermediate license under which we distribute instead of the distributing directly under the LGPL.

However, I am not an attorney. I am just repeating what was told to me by our IP attorney. Debating over licensing terms is not something I like to get involved in but I thought your post deserved a response since it was a valid question.

Regards,
Jack Slocum





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Re: Disappointing
[info]mjg59
2008-03-29 07:09 pm UTC (link)
I'm afraid I don't understand this at all. I'm not distributing it as part of a product that will be packaged as a library, so that section of your license doesn't apply to me. I'm not making any profit, so your license states that I may use it under the terms of the LGPL. The LGPL terms include the right to provide it to other people under the terms of the LGPL, which is what I'm doing.

What you seem to be claiming is that you're not providing it to me under the terms of the LGPL at all. As I said, as the copyright holder you're free to do that - it's just not what the license terms state. If this is the case, then I'd suggest fixing your license.

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Re: Disappointing
[info]jackvslocum
2008-03-29 10:07 pm UTC (link)
> I'm afraid I don't understand this at all.

Unfortunately, I don't think I can explain it any clearer.

> I'm not distributing it as part of a product that will be packaged as a library

That's exactly what you are doing. You are distributing a javascript software development library. It doesn't state that you have to charge for it.

> so that part of license doesn't apply to me

The entire license applies to you or anyone else who uses Ext JS. You can't selectively choose to ignore individual parts of the license. That's not how it works.

> The LGPL terms include the right to provide it to other people under
> the terms of the LGPL, which is what I'm doing.

As per the license, you have no LGPL rights since you are distributing a software development library.

> What you seem to be claiming is that you're not providing it to me
> under the terms of the LGPL at all

I am not "claiming" anything. It's in plain english in the license file you chose to delete from the distribution. That part of the license is not open to interpretation since it is spelled out in the clear terms "Use of the open source license terms in a LIBRARY is not permitted without explicit permission.".

Regards,
Jack Slocum

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Re: Disappointing
[info]mjg59
2008-03-29 10:52 pm UTC (link)
No, that's not what your license says.

"You may use our open source license terms if you meet any of the following criteria" (emphasis yours)

"Use Ext in a personal, educational or non-profit manner"

I'm not making profit. So, so far so good. I get it under the terms of the LGPL. You're very specific about that. At this point I'm not planning to distribute it.

"If you plan to distribute Ext in a product that will be packaged or sold as a software development library, toolkit or plug-in-based framework (LIBRARY), we require that you work with us to establish a specific license that is appropriate."

Now you try to restrict the LGPL terms. However, section 7 of the GPL (which is part of the LGPL) states that I may ignore that additional restriction. I can now distribute it in any form I want, as long as I abide by the terms you licensed it udner - that is, the LGPL. Not that I think this matters, since I'm not distributing Ext in a product. I'm distributing Ext.

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Re: Disappointing
[info]jackvslocum
2008-03-30 01:10 am UTC (link)
You are quoting specific parts and leaving out others. Like I said, that's not how licensing works. I will try to explain it one last time because you seem like a nice young man and I believe you have the best of intentions.

> I'm not making profit. So, so far so good. I get it under
> the terms of the LGPL. You're very specific about that.
> At this point I'm not planning to distribute it.

Yes, you are right you meet that criteria. That is clear and I am not trying to argue with you about that. If that was all that the license said, you would surely have the right to distribute it under the LGPL. However...

LIBRARY is defined as "software development library, toolkit or plug-in-based framework" in the license. I don't think it is debatable whether or not your distribution is LIBRARY. It definitely falls under that definition.

Then it states, "Use of the open source license terms in a LIBRARY is not permitted without explicit permission.".

The same as your point above is not debatable, my point here is not debatable. It is very clear that you don't meet this requirement of our license.

The part where you are confused is that you seem to believe that meeting one requirement of the license means all other requirements or restrictions are no longer valid. That is definitely not the case - you must satisfy all requirements of a license.

Hopefully this provides enough clarification to close the discussion.

Best of luck,
Jack Slocum

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Re: Disappointing
[info]mjg59
2008-03-30 01:29 am UTC (link)
No, you're still missing the point. As you agree, I am able to download the code under the terms of the LGPL. You claim that I am not then allowed to distribute under the terms of the LGPL. This is a restriction that is in addition to the LGPL terms that I have obtained the code under. However, the terms of the LGPL explicitly state that I may ignore any further restrictions (as I said before, see section 7 of the GPL and see the second paragraph of the LGPL to understand why the terms of the GPL are also relevant here).

You've released your software under the terms of a license that goes out of its way to say that I may then ignore any more restrictive license terms that you also impose. You may not have meant to do that, and I have every sympathy for people who are hit by unexpected licensing consequences after receiving inadequate legal advice. The easiest way for you to fix that is to remove all references to the terms of the LGPL from your license, and then figure out what terms you do want to release your code under.

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Re: Disappointing
[info]jackvslocum
2008-03-30 02:35 pm UTC (link)
No, that's not what I said. You have to be in compliance with the *entire* license before you can use the code. Nothing was said about "download" or "distribution". You don't meet the requirements of our license, so you are unable to use OR distribute the code. I have made it very clear with my explanation and if you can't understand, then anything else I type would just be wasting my time.

Regards,
Jack Slocum

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Re: Disappointing
[info]mjg59
2008-03-30 02:38 pm UTC (link)
At the point where I obtained the code, I was in compliance with the entire license (at that point, I had no intention of distributing it). The license stated that I could utilise it under the terms of the LGPL, and one of the terms of the LGPL allows me to remove any further restrictions.

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Re: Disappointing
[info]jmtd
2008-03-31 09:26 am UTC (link)
You should remove all references to LGPL from your license. Copy the clauses you wish to keep, but do not call it LGPL or anything like it.

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Just one clear question ?
(Anonymous)
2008-04-18 06:04 am UTC (link)
I am impressed with the library.

I wish to use it for developing my own web based application software[commercial]. I am not developing any library or toolkit but pure applications which will be deployed at clients place or some Internet server.

Can I use it under LGPL or I have to buy a commercial license for it ?



ps : No court room language please.

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Re: Disappointing
(Anonymous)
2008-04-23 06:21 pm UTC (link)
I have to agree with you. The license clearly states that as long as I meet certain clauses I receive the license under the terms of the LGPL. Once I have the code under the terms of the LGPL I'm free to distribute derivatives, also under the terms of the LGPL. If I'm not free to distribute under the terms of the LGPL, then you never licensed the software to me under the terms of the LGPL, which is nonsensical. Anyway I'm not a lawyer, but lucky I'm hired by Red Hat who have a lot of experience with this and I should have an answer soon - one way or another.

My advice to EXT though is to recognise that there is a large community out there of of none GPL projects who have become dependant on EXTJS, thinking that it was LGPL. In good faith they should come clean and just clearly license, what amounts now to legacy code, as LGPL. This will allow them to move forward with their GPL codebase without leaving behind a lot of negativty and busted (non gpl) open source communities.

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