[Zope-dev] Re: [Checkins] SVN: z3c.formjs/branches/pcardune-extjs/ creating a branch to see what I can do about extjs integration.

[Jim Fulton]

On Apr 21, 2008, at 12:58 PM, Tres Seaver wrote:

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> Benji York wrote:
>> On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 7:45 AM, Baiju M <mbaiju at zeomega.com> wrote:
>>> It looks like today they changed their licence to GPL v3 !
>>
>> I don't know if that exclamation mark is of joy or woe.  I vote for  
>> woe.
>
> I don't know if woe is necessarily fight:  given that we are talking
> about a component which is served separately from any of our Python
> code, without even the (debatable) trigger of a Python import to cause
> our code to be a "derived work", the "mere aggregation" clause is  
> likell
> to apply to distributing ExtJS with a ZPLed Python library /  
> application.

We're not just talking about Python code.  We're also talking about  
Javascript code.  We'll be providing JS code that runs in the browser  
with and depends  on the Ext code. My library did and Paul's changes  
did.

Reading the GPL3, The language is very broad.  It talks about works  
"based on" GPL works being GPL.  In: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation 
, the FAQ talks about programs communicating via interprocess  
communication.  In particular: "But if the semantics of the  
communication are intimate enough, exchanging complex internal data  
structures, that too could be a basis to consider the two parts as  
combined into a larger program."  It would be easy, IMO, and useful  
for a Python framework to generate data structures that are meant to  
be consumed by Ext.  For example, my from framework returns Ext field  
definitions as JSON.

> Having an unambiguous FOSS license on the code has to be good news for
> those who would like to build and distribute such components.

I don't find anything about the GPL to be unambiguous unless I read it  
with the broadest, most paranoid interpretation.

>  ZMySQLDA,
> for instance, is a ZPLed component which depends on the non-ZPL MySQL
> client libraries, which doesn't seem to cause problems.

Good point.

I think we were sloppy here and it probably does cause problems.  I  
think we probably should remove this from the repository.

> We *still* can't put the ExtJS code itself into svn.zope.org, but
> perhaps we can now allow checking in ZPLed code which uses it.


No, we can't.  I am willing to be overridden by the Foundation Board  
on this.  Absent that, consider this an edict. :)

Jim

--
Jim Fulton
Zope Corporation