As you may notice, I’ve used Ext JS in a couple of my own projects. I can say Ext JS is a professional project and what Jack Slocum has been doing are better than any other projects in term of UI components: with a few lines of JavaScript codes, you can create an excellent UI that gives you a new experience you may never have with other JavaScript/Ajax libraries (though it’s still far from perfection as anything else).

I got the first experience with this lib since it was an extension of YUI (named YUI-Ext) and under BSD license for clear reason that YUI is under BSD license too. Time passed, Ext JS grew mature and could stand as independent project when version 1.0 came out. The license, therefore, was changed to dual style: user could either choose LGPL with additional terms (which was criticized for not being “open” enough, however) or pure commercial license. Yet, it was not really a problem for the community when user could still use Ext JS and all great extensions of it (under LGPL too) in commercial projects.

A few days ago, a minor version of Ext JS (2.1) was released along with huge sock that the license has been changed (again) to GPL v3. It means now you cannot use the latest version of Ext JS in commercial projects without purchasing commercial license and nastily, when you have commercial license, you may not be able to use user-contributed extensions which likely will be released under GPL (or to buy additional licenses from authors of extensions? Update: Jack seems to have response to this issue). The major problem, on the other hand, is the community can no longer trust Jack & Co. for the inconsistency of its license policy. What would happen if the license is to be changed again in future releases?

All right Jack, I know you have talent and you may need more money to pay for high-end developers but not that way. I, myself, will have to re-consider all aspects of legality for using Ext JS or just find the way to get rid of it to avoid all headaches.

Please read more about Ext JS saga here:

• Choosing an OSS License and the Ext-JS saga
• My response to Jack Slocum’s post on the GWT-Ext forum
• Ext Discovers Step 2 of the Slashdot Business Model?
• More cluelessness from ExtJS lead developer Jack on the GPL issue
• Are You At Risk? Abrupt OS License Changes
• OpenEXT: The fork

Recommended Reading: This site recommends Website Magazine for 'Net Success

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