Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it hard to stomach the attitude of this comment. You are sitting on top of a huge stack of free, enterprise-grade software which has sprung up in large part because of the insistence of some of its authors to use GPL. The authors of a little new library that sits on top of it ask that you open source the portion of your product that you derive from it. Not your whole product, not even the whole client-side par…
Actually, if that's what they were asking, then I'd be very happy to comply. But the GPL requires that my ENTIRE product -- anything on the client side -- be GPL'd as well. The MPL requires that anything derived from their library has to remain open-source. That's great. Totally support it. The GPL, as I understand it, requires that anything used with their library must be open-source. That's a problem.
Meteor meets NoGPL
81–90 of 121 posts
Re: Meteor meets NoGPL
#82As exciting as Meteor is (VERY!), their approach to licensing kills it for me. The products I am working on cannot be licensed under GPL for a large number of reasons, and their "talk to us and we'll see what we can do" policy puts too much risk into my business plan. At the early stage of product development, I don't necessarily know the finer points of how my revenue model will work. If there's a fixed fee for a co…
Um... how is "talk to us and we'll see what we can do" a problem? Isn't that exactly how proprietary licensing works for non-shrink-wrap developer tools like this. You'll get the same response if you want to buy ClearCase or a CAD tool, etc... It's a commercial product that also happens to be available under a free license you can't use. How does the second part impact the first? Edit: it seems the implicit context i…
With meteor there is no knowing how the pricing will be without asking first; but nkoren's concern is that they won't know a viable business model until after significant work has gone into development. At that point if nkoren doesn't like the pricing they would have to switch to another framework.
I never got the impression that nkoren was against paying for meteor, just against taking a leap of faith on _any_ system which would require significant investment of time before finding out even a general idea of how the pricing works.
Re: Meteor meets NoGPL
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it hard to stomach the attitude of this comment. You are sitting on top of a huge stack of free, enterprise-grade software which has sprung up in large part because of the insistence of some of its authors to use GPL. The authors of a little new library that sits on top of it ask that you open source the portion of your product that you derive from it. Not your whole product, not even the whole client-side par…
Actually, if that's what they were asking, then I'd be very happy to comply. But the GPL requires that my ENTIRE product -- anything on the client side -- be GPL'd as well. The MPL requires that anything derived from their library has to remain open-source. That's great. Totally support it. The GPL, as I understand it, requires that anything used with their library must be open-source. That's a problem.
With this in mind, the MPL does sound like the better choice. It's still vastly superior to BSD or MIT, since it requires you and me to release any changes we made to the library itself.
What I think this means is that the GPL (or a new successor to it, since Richard Stallman is too much of a curmudgeon) needs to start distinguishing between portions of web applications according to their origin, to enable the various scenarios that are possible when distributing executable code but currently not webapp client-side code.
Re: Meteor meets NoGPL
#84[I'm one of the Meteor authors.] We released under the GPL Tuesday because our single goal was to share our work and direction of thinking with everyone. We hoped to spur a discussion about new ways to build apps that dramatically changes the skill sets required and the time it takes. We look at Meteor as part of an exciting transition from LAMP to a new architecture of rich client applications (see also http://www.f…
Sometimes companies who love and contribute to open source just can't use GPL'ed software, for technical reasons, for lawyer reasons, for FUD, etc.
I, for one, think it would be an awful shame for your cool tech to not achieve the adoption it deserves, just because of GPL.
Re: Meteor meets NoGPL
#85[I'm one of the Meteor authors.] We released under the GPL Tuesday because our single goal was to share our work and direction of thinking with everyone. We hoped to spur a discussion about new ways to build apps that dramatically changes the skill sets required and the time it takes. We look at Meteor as part of an exciting transition from LAMP to a new architecture of rich client applications (see also http://www.f…
At this stage your most powerful evangelists will be hobbyists and spare-timers. When I write code, I like to write it open-source. Setting the obviously negative connotation aside, it is objectively true that the GPL code, compiled or no, is a license virus that spreads so fundamentally that linking with non-GPL-compatible code violates the terms. Because the distinction between client and server code is blurred, this makes the territory murky and introduces overhead into the developer's mind as to whether what is being written can ever be open-sourced or not.
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Besides dampening enthusiasm for using Meteor, this can also reduce the quality and usefulness of modules being released. This sounds counter-intuitive, but consider the following hypotheticals:
Company A develops and maintains a production-ready module that is especially useful for anyone using Meteor. However, the legal department says that the company cannot release software under GPLv3 (this is common). Company B and Person Z want to use it, the former with a commercial license, the latter with a open-source license.
Because Company A cannot release the module under a permissive license, they can 1) Release it permissively but in a GPL-incompatible license, thus banning all Person Z's from developing open-source software with it legally, 2) Opt not to release it at all to Person Z, and just license it to Company B. 3) Abandon Meteor for something they can both release openly (to give back and get more eyes and hands) and develop in-house.
Company C uses a closed-source library, because they're required to use it because it's the only one out there, and they're contractually obligated because that's the business they're in. They use Meteor to get the project off the ground and they never move off, because it's what they know and are good at. Company C can never write, for example, a white-label platform to distribute to Company X and Company Y, because at best they could only distribute the platform sans non-GPL parts. And while the licensing is viral, the understanding of it will not be. So it may lead to GPL violations down the road because Company X didn't understand, and Company C may be holding the bag. Legal doesn't want the company to take the risk and assume liability, so it says "no" and kills the project's use of Meteor.
Company D thinks about the hypothetical case of Company C, only it was just founded and is looking at Meteor. Maybe it was founded by Person Z. Because of the hypothetical of Company C, and because Company D doesn't know what their business is yet, they decide to avoid a potential future nightmare and write their own framework. Maybe they open-source it, because it's compelling and useful, and they want to get as many eyeballs and hands on it as they can, improving it.
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tl;dr I was super-excited about Meteor, but now that it's GPL I will not be touching it with a ten foot pole. I am really sad about this.
Because I value developer freedom, I do not use GPL'd code in my projects, even if it is objectively good. Because I support open-source, and want to give back when I can I do not want use Meteor with a commercial license. So because of your choice of license - and for no other reason - I can not and will not use Meteor.
Re: Meteor meets NoGPL
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can use Meteor. I quote from FAQ: If the GPL doesn't work for your project, get in touch (contact@meteor.com) and we will write you a commercial license to your specifications.
Just give me a price. I don't want to discuss pricing.
Re: Meteor meets NoGPL
#87[I'm one of the Meteor authors.] We released under the GPL Tuesday because our single goal was to share our work and direction of thinking with everyone. We hoped to spur a discussion about new ways to build apps that dramatically changes the skill sets required and the time it takes. We look at Meteor as part of an exciting transition from LAMP to a new architecture of rich client applications (see also http://www.f…
Best of luck with Meteor in any case!
Re: Meteor meets NoGPL
#88As exciting as Meteor is (VERY!), their approach to licensing kills it for me. The products I am working on cannot be licensed under GPL for a large number of reasons, and their "talk to us and we'll see what we can do" policy puts too much risk into my business plan. At the early stage of product development, I don't necessarily know the finer points of how my revenue model will work. If there's a fixed fee for a co…
Okay, wtf people. WTF. WTF.
Does no one remember the massive security concerns people were talking about yesterday? I mean how the hell do you have a business plan where the technology you are considering has a strong chance of improperly preventing users from editing/viewing/deleting all data you are collecting?
Seriously? Dude, all it takes is one competent js person who doesn't like you to potentially delete/modify your entire db.
Re: Meteor meets NoGPL
#89As exciting as Meteor is (VERY!), their approach to licensing kills it for me. The products I am working on cannot be licensed under GPL for a large number of reasons, and their "talk to us and we'll see what we can do" policy puts too much risk into my business plan. At the early stage of product development, I don't necessarily know the finer points of how my revenue model will work. If there's a fixed fee for a co…
Um... how is "talk to us and we'll see what we can do" a problem? Isn't that exactly how proprietary licensing works for non-shrink-wrap developer tools like this. You'll get the same response if you want to buy ClearCase or a CAD tool, etc... It's a commercial product that also happens to be available under a free license you can't use. How does the second part impact the first? Edit: it seems the implicit context i…
Re: Meteor meets NoGPL
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fully agree, AND it's just bad business decision by them. At this point, what they want is Meteor being used by as many developers as possible. That's a big reason Rails, Node.js, etc got so successful. Instead, they cut off their own feet before learning how to walk. Unless they change their licensing terms, when Yahoo's Mojito framework finally comes out (or some other competitor who is just as good as Meteor) unde…
Mojito was released two weeks ago: http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2012/04/yahoo%E2%... On github: https://github.com/yahoo/mojito/ Edit: It's released under a BSD license.