[Users] I wonder Geoext license

[Chris Holmes]

We just started up a section of the wiki to be a licensing FAQ - I hope 
to find some time in the next few days to help fill it out.  If people 
want to add questions that would help, even if you don't know the 
answers.  See http://www.geoext.org/trac/geoext/wiki/license

For this question, if you're fine with a MapFish solution then you're 
fine with a GeoExt solution.  MapFish is GPL 3.  You can easily just 
think of Ext+GeoExt as GPL 3.

Ext+GeoExt also has the additional option that you can purchase a 
developer license and then you will not be bound by the terms of GPL 3. 
    Ext is liberally licensed so it's also compatible with Ext.js's 
developer license.  But if you're doing the deployment on a customers 
site then GPL 3 should be fine for you - it only kicks in if you're 
making some full package that they have to download.

Chris

Yves Moisan wrote:
>> You are right Eric. Ext Core only dontains Ext.data.Connection, and 
>> GeoExt.data.* components require higher levels of Ext.data.*, which are 
>> part of ExtJS.
> 
> I did a bit of searching about Ext 3.0 licensing and my understanding is
> that everything but core will be under the same dual-licensing as Ext
> 2.2.  Is that what everyone understands ?  
> 
> I want to be clear on the implications at customer premisses.  We
> recently had a case where we woke up to the fact the Google API can't be
> used behind a firewall, so we don't want to find out a particular web
> app deployed at customer X violates the GPL v3 and we have to buy a
> "developer" license.  Or rather we want to know beforehand.  
> 
> What does it mean for a particular customer instance where there won't
> be any developers anyhow ?  I need clear guidelines to make sure what we
> deploy at the customer premisses is clear of all EULA's/Terms of all the
> different pieces our solution, and for that matter any typical
> GeoExt/MapFish/OpenLayers solution, contains.  There are many strings in
> the software stack, especially when one starts using the
> sphericalMercator types ...  
> 
> Maybe a "legal" doc section (on the OSGeo site ?) could be started to
> give people general guidelines and point them to attorneys in the case
> they're in doubt.  That page could contain a series of possible software
> combinations both on the server side and the client side and data used
> (OSM, Google ...).  Maybe just a list of the licenses used by the
> different OSGeo projects (regular or in incubation) *including* their
> dependencies and a list of data providers with their terms of use would
> be a start.  It's so easy adding a Google layer (especially since
> everyone wants it on their sites) that people forget about the
> strings ...  Maybe some jurisprudence can be slowly accumulated there so
> people can have comparisons they can make with their particular customer
> settings?  
> 
> Yves
> 
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-- 
Chris Holmes
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.