Hi,

I have created a sourceforge project for those of us who need to keep using LGPL version of ExtJS. The project is based on ExtJS 2.0.2 and initial release is OpenEXT 1.0. According to terms of the LGPL, the code is re-released under LGPL 3.0 only and no other license options or additional restrictions.

I am hoping that we can keep maintaining ExtJS 2.0.2 code base as a community project and thus enable continued enhancements of gwtext. I am just one of the users of gwtext and not really an expert in ExtJS or Javascript in general. Thus I am probably not the best maintainer of the sourceforge project. Anyone up to the task, or at least with patches to contribute, please reply with your contact info so that I can add you as a developer or project admin.

The sourceforge page is at http://sourceforge.net/projects/openext/ and the code there can be immediately used in place of ExtJS for gwtext applications.

I am not experienced in licensing issues but can the statement below be a cause for concern?

"Ext are claiming that a fork of the existing 2.0 version is not legal, due to the way they applied the LGPL. This is likely to be incorrect, and if correct then their use of the name LGPL was grossly misleading."

It appears at http://www.alittlemadness.com/2008/04/2 ... ess-model/. Not sure where this claim is made by Ext.

Abhijeet - I certainly believe that ExtJS employees now wish they have worded their license differently. However, as stated in LICENSE.txt included in ExtJS 2.0.2 distribution and extjs.com website at the time, they were granting LGPL 3.0 license to open source developers as well as closed source developers of applications which are not development libraries. Their actual wording is:



Now consider the following paragraph from (L)GPL:



So if I accept the terms of LGPL, I am permitted and obliged to relicense the entire work - my modified version of ExtJS - under LGPL (and no other restrictions or permissions) to any recipients of my application (since it is LGPL and not GPL, my application itself is not included in the requirements). If I don't, FSF will be on my case for violating their license.

I wish that ExtJS created their own license similar to LGPL but with any additional restrictions they believed were warranted at that time, for example not using their open source code in other development libraries. It would then be clear to each of us if the code was suitable for our projects when we started developing them. It seems gwt-ext wouldn't have been possible then and we would have gwt-smthelse. But, things being as they are, we are entitled to keep using code derived by us from ExtJS 2.0.2 on the terms articulated at that time.

Yeah, the LGPL clause is fine. But that blog entry pointed at (supposedly Ext's claim about) the way LGPL was applied and its implications on a fork. This is what raised my concern. There is a lot of debate going on this and things should be clear in the next few days / weeks.

I just hope this fine library is nurtured AND Ext developers get what they think is fair for the tremendous amount of work that they have put in.

catplusplus,

2 things worth noting.

1) The Ext license included this statement:

"Use of the open source license in a LIBRARY is not permitted without explicit permission from Ext JS, LLC."

This means the rights granted to you in the LGPL will never come into play in a developer library or toolkit. This statement is not up for debate - it is blatantly clear.

2) The Assets (CSS and images) in Ext 2.0.2 are under a proprietary license that prohibits derivative works. If you change them, you void the license. The other interesting aspect to this license is they are only licensed for use "with the associated Ext JavaScript Component". If you change the code to any Ext components, you are not longer using the Ext Component, but instead of derivative work of that component and the Assets license is again voided.

I would recommend consulting legal advice from a licensing expert before making a decision that could eventually jeopardize not only yourself but those using your invalid licensed code.

It's also worth noting that trying to continue an old version of Ext JS under the LGPL for the sake of GWT-Ext won't accomplish a whole lot either. Although sanjiv has made public on his site that HE does not consider using GWT-Ext to be creating combined works, that is contrary to the definition in the LGPL. Since in the end your application is using Ext JS, and we (and the LGPL license) DO believe including Ext JS in an application does constitute a "Combined Work" in many circumstances (as defined by LGPL) and does require all of section 4 of the LGPL be followed (e.g. either requiring end-users to get Ext JS for themselves, or releasing the entire work under the LGPL).

Dear Jack,

Thanks for replying and I am sorry that your work is being used in a way different from what you envisioned or consider to be permitted under your previous license. Unfortunately, the license document for ExtJS 2.0.2 was not carefully worded and have led hundreds of developers to conclude that they have licensed ExtJS under LGPL 3.0 from your company. These developers have now invested months and years of work into learning your library and writing code that would need to be substantially discarded and rewritten to switch to another toolkit.

Please carefully re-read the license document that you have distributed with ExtJS 2.0.2. Are you denying that the language "Ext is also licensed under the terms of the Open Source LGPL 3.0 license." can lead a reasonable person to conclude that if he/she qualifies for the conditions listed afterwards he or she is now a licensee of ExtJS under terms of LGPL 3.0 with all the associated rights and responsibilities? One of those responsibilities is releasing any modifications made to the licensed product under the terms of LGPL 3.0 license.

I don't see how I am personally authorized by LGPL to impose any additional obligations (such as not writing development libraries) on the users of my application. I personally have no problem with your original terms (no development libraries with open source ExtJS, images/css to be used only together with JavaScript). However, I am worried at being in violation of LGPL if I include such terms in the redistribution.

If you believe you are can legally impose such limitations on my downstream users, given the exact wording of your original license document, please just let me know and I will pass this statement to the users who are entitled to get a copy of my modified ExtJS source in a prominent manner. You will then be responsible to resolve any conflicts directly with them or, say, Free Software Foundation.

Please also note that gwt-ext IS released under LGPL 3.0 and therefore Sanjiv is complying with the terms of your license even if gwt-ext is in fact a derived work of ExtJS. Note that he is not bundling ExtJS with his work and therefore it would be up for end users to determine if they qualify for LGPL or commercial license of ExtJS 2.0.2.

Please also understand that you are dealing with a lot of developers working in mom-and-pop startup companies or independent consulting jobs. We do not have the money to consult licensing lawyers and our business models are too volatile to properly account for number of development licenses needed with your paid product. You can probably easily shut us down, including pushing gwtext out of existence, just by outspending us on lawyers without having any legal merit. However, once the news are well discussed on slashdot and digg, how many potential customers do you think will have confidence in the terms of your commercial license or general trust in goodwill of your company?

We are begging you to admit that an honest mistake has been made on your part, probably because you didn't consult licensing experts. You didn't mean to license ExtJS under LGPL, but some license based on LGPL but with additional restrictions. Or you didn't account for the consequence that once even a single developer has your product licensed under LGPL 3.0, he or she has to hence-force obey the exact terms of FSF's license rather than your original document.

However, the actual license given to us was worded in such a way that a neutral reasonable person with no exposure to the prior history of ExtJS or your posts on web forums would most likely conclude that, as a developer of a closed source application which is not a development library, he or she has received an LGPL 3.0 license for ExtJS 2.0.2 from your company.

So let's do a decent thing. ExtJS 2.0.2 has been licensed under LGPL, so there will be a community project built on top of that version. We are not entitled to any of your support, patches or rolling any part of later versions into out distribution. We thanks you for a great product and wish you luck in your future endeavors.

catplusplus,

Thank you for your reply. I understand that the 2.0.2 license was difficult to understand and follow and that the extra non-compete "no toolkit" clause could easily be overlooked. Contrary to popular belief, it was an effort to clean that up that prompted the license change.

One thing your post did not mention was the Assets license. Those assets are also in your sourceforge project and since they are under a proprietary license are not compatible with an LGPL release. In fact that proprietary license does not even grant the right to redistribute the assets. That's how copyright/licensing works - you start with no rights and unless explicitly granted the right to do something, you don't have the right to do it. The only right granted by our Assets license is the right to use the with an Ext JavaScript component. Doing anything else is a direct violation of that license.

You must understand that as a business, we cannot allow ourselves to be in a position where we are competing with our own product. We have to protect our interest in Ext JS, as it is the core of our business. On a personal level, I see any effort to fork as someone trying to steal two years of 16 hour days, my entire life savings and probably all of my gray hairs from me. I understand you have invested time on building your application (s) on Ext JS, but I have invested my life and future into it.

----
With all that said, we are trying to come up with options for people to help them get through the transition. These programs will include free commercial licensing for special cases, a small business program, educational/non-profit licensing and other ways that we can continue to help.

I would suggest that instead of your current route that perhaps a better solution is to contact us and see what we can do to come up with something.

Best Regards,
Jack

Dear Jack,

I have mailed a question about weather or not I have a valid LGPL 3.0 license to ExtJS 2.0.2 to Free Software Foundation at licensing@fsf.org. If it is there an opinion that I misunderstood the license, I will modify OpenEXT license terms, take down the project and/or stop using ExtJS and GWTExt as required to correct any license violations.

As a goodwill gesture, I have also removed my file release and SVN access from sourceforge until I get a more professional opinion on this matter.

In return, are you willing to also accept the opinion of FSF in regard to LGPL licensing of your product? Please feel to free to contact FSF with your side of the story and perhaps interested people in this forum can do the same. Please include " [gnu.org #360806]" in the subject to indicate that you are following up on my request.

In regards to "Assets" - images and css stylesheets - you have not included any license information in your release rather than stating that they can only be redistributed with an accompanying Javascript files. Since you also gave me permission to redistribute Javascript under LGPL, it is a reasonable conclusion that assets can also be distributed with LGPL re-release of Javascript. Please remember that the conditions are determined by a reasonable interpretation of the license given to us with the download, not anything that you say now in a forum.

I understand that you worked hard on your project. And yet, nobody is offering to reimburse me for the effort that I would have wasted if I am unable to use ExtJS under LGPL when I was led to believe otherwise at the time when I downloaded it. I believe that in such cases we have to follow laws and rules, not what someone wishes had happened.

Oleg

"In regards to "Assets" - images and css stylesheets - you have not included any license information in your release rather than stating that they can only be redistributed with an accompanying Javascript files. Since you also gave me permission to redistribute Javascript under LGPL, it is a reasonable conclusion that assets can also be distributed with LGPL re-release of Javascript. Please remember that the conditions are determined by a reasonable interpretation of the license given to us with the download, not anything that you say now in a forum."

If you get one item A under license A and another B under license B, that does not mean you can apply license A automatically to item B.

As for no information being provided... how can you say that?



No where in that license does it say you have right to redistribute Assets under LGPL. In fact, it doesn't give the right to redistribute them at all, only to use them. It further restricts usage to the Ext JavaScript "Component" they were created for. Ext JavaScript component != OpenExt JavaScript component unless that component is unmodified. I'm not just speaking my opinion about that, it is what our legal counsel has advised us.

The rights to do those common things (redistribute, modify, etc) are what are granted in the beginning of most licenses and things we did not grant in this license specifically to prohibit competing libraries from creating Ext "clones". And a lookalike fork would be even more dangerous to us, as a company, than a "clone" of one of our components.

As for the FSF opinion of Ext JS, it would depend on the amount of research they did to come to their conclusion. However, their opinion will never affect the license of the Assets since it was never released under a FSF license.

On a side note, you are welcome to keep you own copy of Ext JS and Assets and maintain it as needed. This was granted to you by the Ext license. Why not do that? It's only when you try to fork and publicly redistribute that it is a licensing issue.

Jack,

So if we decide to purchase extjs commercial licenses for our development team (which is currently priced very reasonably), will we be OK to use gwt-ext and be abiding to your extjs licensing terms? What is your stance and opinion of Sanjiv's gwt-ext library?

Thanks