Jack is back for some more Sencha license bait and switch

Ext, now Sencha, have stayed true to their roots. They have gone back to their old ways of baiting users with their licensing shenanigans again. So Sencha touch first starts out their beta program with an unknown license. Next they come up with a commercial paid licensing scheme but only a few suckers bite.

Out of the blue there is a Jack sighting on the Ext forums http://www.sencha.com/forum/showthread.php?115550-Hello-to-friends and within a matter of days Sencha announces that they have temporarily changed their Sencha touch license to be commercial but free. Brings back of memories of Jack's bait and switch ploys, doesn't it. I feel for the poor bastards that are going to use Sencha touch now only to find that the license has changed within a year to a paid-only option.

Old habits die hard but I must admit that I'm secretly happy that Jack is back as his mere association with Sencha will be it's ultimate demise. He is Jinxed Slocum.

Ext Road Map = Bait and Switch

The Ext guys have done it yet again. They continue to screw users by bait & switch. They baited users by promising the Ext Designer tool in 3.0. It's been around 8 months since and there's no Designer yet. Moreover they had promised it to be a tool that is part of 3.0 but now they are going to charge users an additional amount per year.

The latest scam is thier roadmap which had "mobile components" and "store enhancements" listed to be in thier 3.2 release which is due in March 2010. March is almost here and these guys are have nothing to show for. So what do they do? In typical Ext fasion, they sneakily update the roadmap moving "mobile components" to thier 4.0 release. Thats right - what was slated for a 3.2 release has now been pushed to 4.0 which could very well be a year away. So if you were a user relying on the Ext roadmap for your business, you are now shit out of luck! Moreover you'll have to shell out more $$ to upgrade to the 4.0 release while previously "mobile components" would have been a free upgrade with the 3.2 release.

You can see the changes made to the Ext roadmap here.

The Ext RoadMap is like the "Bridge to Nowhere". Get off it as soon as possible!

Jack Slocum gets fired by Ext LLC

Well, its finally happened. The crafty Jack Slocum has been let go by Ext LLC and Ext JS is now run being driven a bunch of code hackers like "Animal" and wannabees like "Gay Garcia".

For those not familiar with Nige, aka Animal he thinks he's high and mighty but is really a lousy hacker with terrible coding skills. In the early days of Ext, Jack also told him this and treated him as a nobody. But this guy is one persistent grasshopper and has outlived Jack!

Animal's title now says "Ext JS - Community Support Team" and yet he has a signature :

"ExtJs forum volunteer. No official connection to the Ext Company. I do not speak for them.
ExtJs consultancy offered. £ 50/hour. Evenings+weekends. the_bagbournes@btinternet.com"

Perhaps he's trying not to get fired from his day job? The Ext SVN logs have this hacker as one of the active commiters which partly explains the drop in quality of the Ext codebase.

Next up, Gay Garcia. err, Jay Garcia. He is the first to respond to any thread with "Awesome" without even reading the contents. He is trying to make a living of Ext by writing a book which explains his title of being the official Ext ass licker. He does have a knack of posting nice images in his posts like homer simpson pulling his hair out or other cartoon strips. So here's a pic in his honor :

The following is in honor of Jack. May he RIP.

Who is Jack?

For some time many of us have wondered just who is Jack Schitt? We find ourselves at a loss when someone says, "You don't know Jack Schitt!" Well, thanks to my genealogy efforts, you can now respond in an intellectual way.
Jack Schitt is the only son of Awe Schitt.

Awe Schitt, the fertilizer magnate, married Miss O. Needeep They had one son, Jack.

In turn, Jack Schitt married Noe Schitt. The deeply religious couple produced six children: Holie Schitt, Giva Schitt, Fulla Schitt, Bull Schitt, and the twins Deap Schitt and Dip Schitt.

Against her parents' objections, Deap Schitt married her cousin Dumb Schitt, a high school dropout. After being married 15 years, Jack and Noe Schitt divorced.

Noe Schitt later married Ted Sherlock, and, because her kids were living with them, she wanted to keep her previous name. She was then known as Noe Schitt Sherlock.

Meanwhile, Dip Schitt married Loda Schitt, and they produced a son with a rather nervous disposition named Chick N. Schitt.

Two of the other six children, Fulla Schitt and Giva Schitt, were inseparable throughout childhood and subsequently married the Happens brothers in a dual ceremony.

The wedding announcement in the newspaper announced the Schitt-Happens nuptials.

The Schitt-Happens children were Dawg, Byrd, and Hoarse. Bull Schitt, the prodigal son, left home to tour the world. He recently returned from Italy with his new Italian bride, Pisa Schitt.

Now when someone says, "You don't know Jack Schitt," you can correct them.

Ext CEO "Ape Alias" spreads more FUD

It is a well known fact that GPL software can be used without releasing your source code within an Intranet of a SaS (Software as a Service) model where you are not selling a product but rather have a hosted web application. Google does this with MySQL which is GPL, and doesn't release any of thier search engine source code.

However when asked, Ext CEO Ape Alias, states that a license of Ext is required. Not surprising as he wants to screw users into buying licenses even when it is not required.

Forum link : license for using EXT-JS in a web site

Ext user Lobos is quick to point out the this is not the case. However knowing Ext, his post is likely to be deleted soon. And in the event that it is deleted, I have a backup screenshot which I'll post here.

Update : As suspected Jack / Ape Alias have deleted the users post. So here is the screenshot of the original post by user Lobos.

Google gives Ext the finger

Google is now providing a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service where popular Javasctipt libraries like Dojo and JQuery are hosted. Jack and the Ext fanboys make a request to host Ext on the google CDN but google gives them the finger stating :

"For now this will be a no-fix due to licensing issues. All libraries that we host on the Google AJAX Libraries API
are offered free of charge with very liberal licenses. EXT, however, requires a fee for users wishing to use it
commercially. We like to keep the libraries consistent so that we don't put our users in a dangerous situation
where they might be liable without knowing it."

Jack insists that ExtJS will be up on Google Code stating

"Ext JS will be up on Google API in the near future. :)"

http://extjs.com/forum/showthread.php?t=36748&page=2

and then says
"No news yet guys. I'm not sure what the hold up is."

http://extjs.com/forum/showthread.php?t=36748&page=3

and finally

"This is contrary to discussions we have had with them. I will check into it and find out if that is accurate."

http://extjs.com/forum/showthread.php?t=36748&page=4

Well, you want to know what the hold up is about? Google said it best :

"For now this will be a no-fix due to licensing issues (with Ext)."

Source : http://code.google.com/p/google-ajax-apis/issues/detail?id=50#c44

Ajaxian's Dion Almer : At this point, the Ext walls are crumbling

After Ext went GPL, Ajaxian's Dion Almer states

"At this point, the (Ext) walls are crumbling, and Jack needs to make a big effort and come clean to his community to save the reputation of the project. If not, it will probably always be in a cloud of darkness as people are both confused and wonder about motives."

Unfortunately no such effort was made by Jack who is the Ext author.

Dion goes on to say

"With the current Ext JS debacle, you get reminded of how connected your project and business are to other people. Just because you own a company, doesn’t mean that you control it. When I think about my own company, Google, I realize that the most important currency is user trust.

It is a little like your tennis ranking. A rolling year of past performance is what really matters here. It doesn’t matter if you won that grand slam one year and one month ago.

With Ext JS, there was a strange situation. The original license of LGPL-ish was very confusing, which lead to a confused community. Some kind o change was required, and clarity needed to be brought in. Unfortunately, it seems that the move to GPL has caused more chaos and confusion. Developers who poured a lot of time into the community (e.g. by creating GWT-Ext) are upset. The chaos can rip the community apart and you end up with a true lose-lose."

Source :
http://ajaxian.com/archives/openext-the-fork
http://almaer.com/blog/ext-js-a-reminder-that-you-are-not-alone

Graeme Rocher : ExtJS uses community and kicked them up the backside

Graeme Rocher, Grails Lead, on ExtJS :

"The news that Ext-JS has, from one release to the next, changed from a modified LGPL to a GPL based license nearly made me fall off my chair. There have been many poor judged, and ill advised decisions made by software companies over the last few years, but this has got to be up there with the stupidist I've seen and I'm not even personally an Ext-JS user.

What they have effectively done is built up a community, taking full advantage of the open source model by accepting user contributions and patches and then turned around and kicked their own community up the backside. It is projects like Ext-JS that give open source a bad name. How can a company have faith in open source if the people behind it can't even decide how to license the thing?

When you start off in the software business you have to very early on decide whether you are an open source company or whether you are a commercial software company. If you choose the former then you need to choose an appropriate license. For platforms the GPL license can make a lot of sense (think Linux and Java) to prevent forks, force contributions etc. although I'm still not a big fan of it.

On the otherhand for libraries or frameworks only a few licenses make sense (Apache 2.0, MIT, BSD and to a lesser extent LGPL). With Grails we went for Apache 2.0 as one of the most liberal licenses out there. Once you've decided on the license as an open source company your job is the grow the community by attracting users who put faith in your product and the fact that its licensed in a liberal way. Those users would not come in the first place if you had a restrictive license.

By choosing the open source route you have made a decision as a company to promote the community driven approach. Of course this doesn't stop you from releasing a commercial version, you could dual license it as Ext-JS have done for those who want the comfortable feeling of paying for something. You cannot however, have it both ways you are either an open source company or you are not. Ext-JS seem to be stuck in 2 minds as to whether they really are an open source company, it is this indecisiveness that is going to see their community go elsewhere.

It is not like they're unique either, the Ajax framework space is super competitive and they've just dropped the ball and given their competitors a big advantage. My personally prediction on this one is that they'll lose a lot of users, probably to Yahoo UI and jQuery UI or possibly Dojo. Something else will soon come along to fill their space and soon they will have lost their competitive advantage, their users and all those license renewals."

Source : http://graemerocher.blogspot.com/2008/04/choosing-and-oss-license-and-ext-js.html