Ext JS 6.0.1 GPL and official announcement

[Greendrake]

Not surprising people are getting upset that they don't get the latest and greatest for free

Well, not "for free" to be precise. You may have noted that there is only one "Ext 6: Bugs" forum here — for both commercial and GPL versions. GPL users report bugs and suggest solutions there. The bug fixes then get released commercially only.
I am not saying that Sencha is owing those people 6.0.1 GPL — they report bugs voluntarily, and this hardly qualifies as "contribution". But now we have Sencha taking advantage of them for free, don't we?

I'm sure lot of users were using the GPL version for commercial applications effectively stealing the framework

If they are stealing there would be lawsuits. Can you point to some?
If you can't, the explanation is simple: Sencha does not sue them because Sencha knows — they do not actually violate GPL. There is a lot of myths and FUD around GPL, and this is exactly what the current Sencha GPL page is making on purpose.

[iamright]

This is becoming effectively very difficult with all available GPL versions crippled by bugs that don't get fixed for GPL users. I have a commercial license but that doesn't help my open source projects.

To counter point this, I'm using 6.0.0 in a project and have no major or blocking bugs from the framework. I have overrides and extensions but I guess not the same that you do. Back in the 4.x days I definitely had to struggle but in my projects since 5 came out, things have been much better in the releases.

Why even offer the GPL license anymore if it's going to be treated like a trial version that's limited with bugs? I get that sencha needs to drive sales but this is a terrible way to do it that is ultimately going to severely curtail growth of the developer base and subsequently the viability of this development platform. With all the warnings, watermarks, and download hoops in place around the GPL version now can't it be kept current with patch releases?

"download hoops"? You mean filling out a form and getting a download link? Wouldn't really call that a hoop, just an extra step. I do agree that I'm worried about the future state of the dev pool to choose from since the entry price is so high. Also, if they dump the GPL license, did you just put that idea in their heads? I'm injecting some humor (maybe just for me) there.

[iamright]

Well, not "for free" to be precise. You may have noted that there is only one "Ext 6: Bugs" forum here — for both commercial and GPL versions. GPL users report bugs and suggest solutions there. The bug fixes then get released commercially only.
I am not saying that Sencha is owing those people 6.0.1 GPL — they report bugs voluntarily, and this hardly qualifies as "contribution". But now we have Sencha taking advantage of them for free, don't we?

Sencha (or Ext LLC before) has never made a claim that they are an open source company (least I've never seen a statement for it). They have said "Sencha is an avid supporter of open source software." but that's not the same thing as being an open source company. This model has been the same for a long time. I don't think it's taking advantage of us, the fixes will be in the next GPL release and not knowing plans, 6.1.0 may be out soon. So a commercial license is more of an expedited access to the bug fixes.

If they are stealing there would be lawsuits. Can you point to some?
If you can't, the explanation is simple: Sencha does not sue them because Sencha knows — they do not actually violate GPL. There is a lot of myths and FUD around GPL, and this is exactly what the current Sencha GPL page is making on purpose.

It's common practice to keep things out of the public spotlight, it can be seen as Sencha being a bully. Plus, things may be settled. I know I would attempt to make things right when lawyers would approach me if I was using a GPL license for a commercial application, I wouldn't want to go through the expense of going through the court system.

[iamright]

Down votes are funny...

What if they got rid of GPL and had a single commercial license?

[themightychris]

What if they got rid of GPL and had a single commercial license?

Then my team, for one, couldn't use the framework anymore because my company produces both commercial and funded open source software. The investment required to learn, stay on top of, and recruit/train developers isn't worth doing with two entirely separate stacks for our open source and our commercial work. It's already enough of a pain maintaining our own fixes for keeping the open source projects a framework patch release or two behind.

It's not about deciding whether to pay for the commercial license or not. Our output includes open source projects and we can't use commercially licensed versions of the framework in them, there is no product I can even buy from Sencha to allow that.

[Greendrake]

Down votes are funny...

They are . I noted that my posts on GPL/Sencha policy typically receive similar amount of both up and down votes. Pluralism, sir!

What if they got rid of GPL and had a single commercial license?

Well, in that case I would probably see if we can fork the latest GPL version and organise community around it. Sure thing that won't be easy but it will worth a try. As long as you use the framework in your business you spend time on it anyway (bugfixing, adding features), so if the effort is made together things may work out. There is also a lot of positive clarification that can be made on using GPL'ed JavaScript in commercial development. Currently there is a lot of false FUD/scaremongering in the air about it.

[ethraza]

With every new version and the Sencha bad strategies I see that it is getting more and more difficult to keep going as a ExtJs developer.
Now I'm building my Startup and I'm creating my first Open Source project with ExtJs, but I really don't know if I'll keep with ExtJs in the future projects, because of that difficult things around the GPL version.
I like ExtJs framework a lot, I use it since version 0.0.1, when it was just a fork from YUI named YUI-ext or something, and now I'm so sad with all this stuff, really sad.

[Greendrake]

I'm building my Startup and I'm creating my first Open Source project with ExtJs, but I really don't know if I'll keep with ExtJs in the future projects, because of that difficult things around the GPL version

Is your startup a piece of software that developers would use to create other software? Or is it an end-user thing? In the latter case I do not see what difficulties GPL can impose given that it applies to frontend only.

[ethraza]

Is your startup a piece of software that developers would use to create other software? Or is it an end-user thing? In the latter case I do not see what difficulties GPL can impose given that it applies to frontend only.

It is an Open source frontend for a Closed source backend.

Dispite the fact no one really knows how to interpret the GPL stuff in cases like that, there is the fact that we may never have access to bug fixes just because we are Open Sourcing, and how people say before, buy a license would not help the OSS cases.

[themightychris]

there is the fact that we may never have access to bug fixes just because we are Open Sourcing, and how people say before, buy a license would not help the OSS cases.

Re: bug fixes, I've been maintaining a package with hotfixes for all the bugs I've encountered for all GPL framework versions: https://github.com/JarvusInnovations/sencha-hotfixes

There are separate branches for different frameworks/versions, and overrides strictly restore intended/documented behavior (rather than add any new features or opinionated changes). It should be safe to add the whole package to any project by default and just avoid known issues from the start. Please submit PRs with your own hotfixes! I will review and maintain them.