License questions on non open source apps

[nvivo]

Hi,

I'm new to extjs, and was taking a look at the licenses at the site. The page shows 2 licenses:

Commercial License: This is the appropriate option if you are creating proprietary applications and you are not prepared to distribute and share the source code of your application under the GPL.

Open Source License: This is the appropriate option if you are creating an open source application with a license compatible with the GNU GPL license v3.

Now, the GPL FAQ states here (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem):

You cannot incorporate GPL-covered software in a proprietary system. (...) However, in many cases you can distribute the GPL-covered software alongside your proprietary system. To do this validly, you must make sure that the free and non-free programs communicate at arms length, that they are not combined in a way that would make them effectively a single program.

Then I found this on a thread (http://extjs.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2253):

Ext continues to be open source, with a LGPL license. This allows for continued use in open source projects and free usage for everyone who wants use it (even commercial).

But LGPL is not mentioned at all on the license page (maybe the post is old and outdated?).

So, can anyone make this clear for me and some people here that found that a little bit confusing?

If my website depends on ExtJs for the interface, does it mean for GPL that they look like a single program, or they "communicate at arms length" since I just use the officially published API?

Considering I'm getting the original ExtJS distribution and not modifying it, which license would apply or what would I need to do to use ExtJS in each of these situations:



A personal website.
An internal website I create for my own company.
An internet facing website I create for my own company.
An website I'm creating and selling to a client.

Thanks.

[hbstone]

A personal website.
An internal website I create for my own company.
An internet facing website I create for my own company.
An website I'm creating and selling to a client.

Thanks.

I am not a lawyer, etc, etc, etc...

The concept that keeps coming up in the licensing threads is that if your app is specifically dependent on ExtJS to provide functionality, then it's one program as far as GPL is concerned.

If you can comment out the Ext script tags and still basically use your website/app, it's not dependent. If you can replace Ext with some other Javascript library or code (so long as it's not a clone of Ext, of course) and use your website/app, it's not dependent on ExtJS.

Perhaps unfortunately, it would be hard to use any library without being considered dependent on that library... I mean, if you just call Ext.get("whatever"), it stands to reason that dropping the Ext scripts might break your app. The devil's in the details, I guess you would just have to make sure things degrade gracefully and you don't lose all functionality just because one or two files are missing.

Remember also that if you're serving your pages on a website, you're already distributing your HTML and Javascript "source code" to the site's users. So as long as you're not referencing Ext from any server-side code, you'd already be complying with the terms of GPLv3.

I am not a lawyer, etc, etc, etc...

[Lobos]

I am not a lawyer, etc, etc, etc...

If you can comment out the Ext script tags and still basically use your website/app, it's not dependent. If you can replace Ext with some other Javascript library or code (so long as it's not a clone of Ext, of course) and use your website/app, it's not dependent on ExtJS.


<noscript>
This is how my web app functions without Ext... it is made to output this without Ext
</noscript>