Thanks for your comment. Interestingly, Ext claim to be doing just fine commercially even before this move. They certainly have a large enough base that even with a very small percentage paying (and likely for support more than a different license in the previous versions) they could make a decent amount.

I think with this sort of product (a framework) in this age it is difficult to compete unless you go open. Even the switch to GPL may be a long-term mistake for Ext. Perhaps a better plan would be to concentrate on selling support and building commercial products on top of the open framework. At the shrink-wrap level commercial offerings can and do compete successfully with free alternatives.

Personally I consider the idea of selling free dead on delivery. Has anyone pulled it though ever, not considering the free-to-use-paid-support model?

I was using ext for one of my projects and was updating some stuff when I came across the ext licensing brouhaha all over the internet. I must say the licensing terms appeared sneaky from the beginning when I started using the library, but since what I wanted to use it for appeared to be LGPL licensed, I decided to go along with it. One of the major reasons I decided to use it was that ext appeared to do some pretty amazing stuff and with a really nice interface. BIG MISTAKE. The library was horrendously hard to learn and to use and debug, not in the least because:
a) For a lot of the stuff in the API (which appeared to be well documented but was really not because a lot of it was just repitition of not very helpful comments) there was no contextutal information which can quickly tell a developer how to use the api (to get an idea regarding what I’m talking about, see jQuery API). Even YUI docs are better than ext.
b) Second, but more importantly, noobs were treated like crap in the forums.
Anyways I went along since the benifits seemed to outweigh all that. With the benifit of hindsight, it is now clear why it was not in the best interests of the Ext team that the developers learn to use the library easily and on their own - or how else would they make support money? Also, lacking the budget for as big a testing/development team as the open source comuunity, it was in the ext owner’s best interests to keep the real nature of their motives hidden until they had a commercially viable product ready.

This licensing fiasco is really the last straw. I really don’t have a problem with paying, its the sneakiness on the part of ext people that annoys me. I don’t care how many hours I spend porting over my code, but as of now, I have thrown out the ext-js library from my project.

1. The lack of collaborative discussion with the entire Ext community prior to making the decision to go GPL/Commercial.

2. A rather closed off attitude towards new users. Their forum is filled with sarcastic, belittling, comments by so-called support, premium members, and core devs. I swear, it seems that this rather tiny group would rather sit about comparing their super-secret-decoder rings than lower themselves to provide encouraging, helpful answers to inexperienced Ext users. Nothing, including poorly conceived licensing schemes, turns potential developers (and thus their companies) off faster than smart ass responses, and rather childish rants. Ext had better come to some agreement on how to handle user support, else they will soon be deader than Julius Caesar–and a lot sooner than they think.

3. There is nothing unusual about dual-licensing schemes. However, Ext clearly does not understand the business models where this scheme has been successfully deployed. Just look at the companies that use it. MySql, Mandrake, etc. They all use this method of licensing. The difference is that they split their open source model, and their paid model off into two distinctly separate products. The most successful of them also have split their commercial enterprise (spun-off) into their own entities. This provides a great path for potential investors who would shutter at the Ext model in its current form. Moreover, it provides the open source community with a truly open system to help make the commercial product better. Everyone wins! Imagine that.

Finally, the Ext special exclusion/exception clauses in their rather amateurishly defined GPLv3 licensing scheme is chock full of holes. Even if that last statement is incorrect, and I stand by it for the moment, what makes Ext such a potentially great product is completely undermined by their lack of marketing knowledge. Hopefully, they will get it together, and soon.

“Open Source License Exception for Extensions
Draft .26, April 28th, 2008″
http://extjs.com/products/ux-exception.php

The only license that will protect your work, should you want to close, and *still* be able to function in an open source environment is the BSD (or similar) licenses.

Be wary of the GPL.

The BSD community has been saying this for a long time, but all those GPL fanboys liked to shout over our voices and now the GPL has spread too far and we are begining to see the damages.