[Psc] GeoExt3 licensing questions / new options

Mon Jan 18 15:06:15 CET 2016

Hi,

Thanks guys for taking the lead on this.

I do not have more questions or comments other than what you already 
stated. Maybe one:
  - If we stop paying the yearly commercial cost (for lack of funding 
for example). What happens to the old code, the new features and the bug 
fixes?

+1 for this.

Julien

On 16-01-18 03:45 AM, Bart van den Eijnden wrote:
> Hey Marc,
>
> I’m in favour of this approach if we have parties covering the cost.
>
> I think we’ll need to have a commercial and a GPL version of GeoExt, so
> dual license. Are there any demands from Sencha on the price we need to
> charge for the commercial version, or can this be $0 or $1?
>
> Next to the initial costs, I believe we need to cover maintenance for
> those 25 licenses. So that will be an additional yearly cost if I’ve
> understood correctly?
>
> I’m +1 on you taking the lead on this. Thanks in advance.
>
> Also, we would need some assurance from Sencha that they will not yet
> again change the rules on us in the future.
>
> Best regards,
> Bart
>
>> On 18 Jan 2016, at 09:10, Marc Jansen <jansen at terrestris.de
>> <mailto:jansen at terrestris.de>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> You all know that we have relicensed GeoExt3 under GPL to be compliant
>> with the father library ExtJS which has removed the exception for
>> opensource libraries back in the day. See here for more details with
>> regard to that change: https://github.com/geoext/geoext3/pull/16
>>
>> This change can be difficult for users; consider the following:
>>
>>   * A user has bought licenses from sencha for ExtJS so he is not
>>     bound to the GPL
>>   * He creates an appliaction and releses / sells it according to the
>>     sencha license
>>   * If he were to include (and extend) GeoExt3, his application would
>>     be infected by the GPL, since he cannot buy a commercial version,
>>     nor is our code released in away that it inherits the actuial
>>     license of the father library
>>   * He decides against using GeoExt (and with a reasoning I can
>>     totally understand)
>>
>> In the past we were in touch with sencha to get back such an
>> exception, so that we could release our code under a more permissive
>> license, but without success.
>>
>> We have gotten an offer to buy commercial licenses for the GeoExt
>> project though, for a price of ~5.000 US-$ 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> Here are my questions to the PSC:
>>
>>   * A) Would the PSC like to go this way further?
>>   * B) Do we want to dual-license GeoExt3?
>>   * C) Which questions do you think we need to ensure are answered by
>>     the sencha officials when we buy their licenses?
>>   * D) Do you see other important show stoppers?
>>
>> I start with my thoughts:
>>
>> 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).
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> ad C) Here is a list of things I want to talk with sencha about:
>>
>>   * Is there definitively no option of granting just the GeoExt
>>     project a licensing exception?
>>   * What is a current offer (costs and number of licenses)
>>   * If we relicense, how are we to tell our users about this
>>   * Can we still accept contributions from all users?
>>   * Do we need to spend a license for every committer of the project?
>>   * What if a committer decides to leave the project, can we reuse hi
>>     license for another committer?
>>   * 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.
>>
>> ad D) I currently see none.
>>
>> Please tell me what you think.
>>
>> Best,
>> Marc
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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Julien-Samuel Lacroix
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Mapgears
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