We’re pleased to announce that as of our newest 2.2.0 release (GA a couple of days ago) we’re going to be changing the licensing for the Appcelerator SDK. We now have officially moved away from the GNU Public License (GPL), version 3 to a more permissive Apache Public License, version 2. So, why the change?
1. We’ve talked and listened to the community a lot in the past 6 months to understand how people want to use Appcelerator, how they are presently using Appcelerator and what types of things they would like to do in the future. We’ve clearly heard a very resounding theme: GPL is not the right license from a community perspective because of the implications that it brings to redistribution, especially as it relates to building web applications and how they are incorporated and downloaded by a web server. While we initially considered attempting to clarify our position on the GPL as it relates to these special legal concerns — I felt like we would essentially dilute the intent of the GPL license and that would defeat it’s purpose. This was a clear indication that our license didn’t match our business and technical goals.
2. We are not pursuing a normal path like most open source companies — especially one’s before us like JBoss and MySQL. Our business model is not centered around income from a “for fee” derivative based on the “for free” version. This is a very popular OSS business model and one that has its merits in professional open source. I personally think this OSS business model makes sense for a lot of companies. However, not all open source companies are made equal and we are not going down this path. While we will continue to provide special licensing, indemnification and support as customers want it — we’re not going to ask you to buy a paid version of the SDK after you adopt the free version.
After careful consideration, we’ve decided that the Apache Public License fits the bill for us because it balances some basic legal protections (i.e. NO WARRANTY) with the ability to provide the community with a license that enables broad use of our technology. This gives everyone the ability to use it, modify it and redistribute it in every circumstance. We believe this is a good thing and will enable the community to more easily adopt Appcelerator. There’s always the danger that someone will rip it off and use it without giving back — but I believe that’s a risk we’re willing to take to enable a better outcome for everyone. Ultimately, it’s hard to anticipate what evil people might do against you. Our goal is to help make the open web world a better place and the Appcelerator SDK is the first step of many towards that.
I realize that this leaves one major question. What is your revenue model? However, that’s a post for another day and it will become clear in the future. For now, we want to focus on continuing to build on our fast community growth, continue to listen to what problems you’re facing and how Appcelerator can help you solve them, and work hard to build the best rich web platform around. We have a long way to go, and with your support, we’ll get there together. Thanks for your continued support, kind words and positive criticism. We’re listening.
Code strong!
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