[Psc] GeoExt3 licensing questions / new options

Christian Mayer chris at meggsimum.de
Mon Jan 18 20:27:23 CET 2016 

Hi,

thank you Marc for bringing this up again. There has been a lot of talk and activities around the GeoExt license a few month ago. I have been partly involved in an approach to convice Sencha that we can make GeoExt BSD-licensed again. Sencha did not agree but offered a discount for their licenses in case they are used in the GeoExt project. I summarized this in October on the PSC list [1], where I also shared some thoughts and doubts about buying licenses is a suitbale way.
I can understand that there is a need to offer customers a way out of GPL as Marc pointed out. So if all questions are answered clearly and both (GeoExt and Sencha) agree on a suitable way to do this I am OK with a dual licensing model.

Some questions are coming into my mind:
  - As far as I know Sencha licenses are bound to a developer for several months (I think 6 months). Is this still the case? Can we transfer th license after this 6 months?
  - How are updates of ExtJS handled (especially major releases)? Are they included in our agreement or do we have to pay them? Or do we have to pay even yearly?
  - How do we handle pull requests? Can we merge them from everyone or do we have to bind a license to this contributor before?
  - Is old code affected in whatever way? 


Best regards,
Chris

[1] http://www.geoext.org/pipermail/psc/2015-October/000190.html


On Mon, 18 Jan 2016 09:06:15 -0500
Julien-Samuel Lacroix <jlacroix at mapgears.com> wrote:

> 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
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Psc mailing list
> >> Psc at geoext.org <mailto:Psc at geoext.org>
> >> http://www.geoext.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/psc
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Psc at geoext.org
> > http://www.geoext.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/psc
> >
> 
> -- 
> Julien-Samuel Lacroix
> T: +1 418-696-5056 #202
> Mapgears
> http://www.mapgears.com/
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-- 
Christian Mayer <chris at meggsimum.de>

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