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Hi everybody,<br>
<br>
You all know that we have relicensed GeoExt3 under GPL to be
compliant with the father library ExtJS which has removed the
exception for opensource libraries back in the day. See here for
more details with regard to that change:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/geoext/geoext3/pull/16">https://github.com/geoext/geoext3/pull/16</a><br>
<br>
This change can be difficult for users; consider the following: <br>
<ul>
<li>A user has bought licenses from sencha for ExtJS so he is not
bound to the GPL</li>
<li>He creates an appliaction and releses / sells it according to
the sencha license</li>
<li>If he were to include (and extend) GeoExt3, his application
would be infected by the GPL, since he cannot buy a commercial
version, nor is our code released in away that it inherits the
actuial license of the father library</li>
<li>He decides against using GeoExt (and with a reasoning I can
totally understand)</li>
</ul>
<p>In the past we were in touch with sencha to get back such an
exception, so that we could release our code under a more
permissive license, but without success.<br>
</p>
<p>We have gotten an offer to buy commercial licenses for the GeoExt
project though, for a price of ~5.000 US-$ for 25 licenses (I am
just looking up the correct numbers, don't nail me on these). We
have to get in touch with the sencha people again to confirm
actual numbers.<br>
</p>
<p>We at terrestris have now three parties that are basically
showing interest to pay for these licenses. Nothing is fixed, but
they all generally agree that they want to do sth. in that
direction.<br>
</p>
<p>Here are my questions to the PSC:<br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>A) Would the PSC like to go this way further?</li>
<li>B) Do we want to dual-license GeoExt3?</li>
<li>C) Which questions do you think we need to ensure are answered
by the sencha officials when we buy their licenses?</li>
<li>D) Do you see other important show stoppers?</li>
</ul>
<p>I start with my thoughts:<br>
</p>
<p>ad A) I want to start one last approach at giving back our users
the freedom of usage back they had with earlier versions. I
volunteer to negotiate with sencha if ozthers agree. I don't want
this to be a neverending story and as such I consider the outcome
of this new approach to bve definitive (at least for me
personally).<br>
</p>
<p>ad B) I can live with a dual licensing which would basically just
state: "GeoExt is released under the GPL. In order to use it
without infecting your application code, you can use any existing
sencha license you may have. If you own sencha licenses for the
base library ExtJS, these klcenses also cover GeoExt, and you are
free to release (and sell) your code under the terms of the sencha
agreement" (wording TODO), we should talk with sencha about this
part.<br>
</p>
<p>ad C) Here is a list of things I want to talk with sencha about:<br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>Is there definitively no option of granting just the GeoExt
project a licensing exception?</li>
<li>What is a current offer (costs and number of licenses)<br>
</li>
<li>If we relicense, how are we to tell our users about this</li>
<li>Can we still accept contributions from all users?</li>
<li>Do we need to spend a license for every committer of the
project?</li>
<li>What if a committer decides to leave the project, can we reuse
hi license for another committer?</li>
<li>Can users of the GQL version still use the GeoExt library as
they have before (e.g. just download it and have fun)? We do not
want to force our users into buying licenses of sencha.</li>
</ul>
<p>ad D) I currently see none.<br>
</p>
<p>Please tell me what you think.<br>
</p>
<p>Best,<br>
Marc<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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