[Javeline PlatForm] Licensing and support

[Arnold Daniels]

Hi All,

I would like to come back on the explanation I gave 2 weeks ago about 
licensing and share our vision for Javeline PlatForm at the same time.

We are distributing Javeline PlatForm under the GPL license. On the 
contrary to what many believe, this is not a 'for non-commercial use' 
license. We do not consider this platform a toy, but a tool which can be 
used to build next-generation professional applications. This means that 
we see our community as professionals and professionals need to make money.

GPL does set a few limits though. It is not allowed to create a product 
integrating JPF and go and sell them as closed packages from your store. 
Nor can someone fork the project and continue as a proprietary software 
project or take parts from JPF and use it in a proprietary software 
project. This protects us as well as the community from people who want 
to take all and give nothing.

Even though Javeline PlatForm is currently in beta state it is not a new 
framework. It has existed for many years as a closed source project, 
primarily used by ourself to create cutting edge web-applications. We 
have released the project open-source, because we knew we were sitting 
on a gem and we want this project to be as successful as it can be by 
opening it up to others as freely as we can.

Does this mean the software is free? Well nothing in life is free. 
Sometimes, you might get software for free, just to discover that you 
need a commercial license for it to be useful, because of all the 
restrictions. That is not how we are publishing JPF. The philosophy 
behind open-source is sharing and collaboration so each member of the 
community will benefit, while not weighing every grain of sand but doing 
what you can. A benefit might be the fact that you can build a better 
application, faster than the competitor, which lands you the order. We 
hope to benefit by having Facebook come to us, when they needs a new GUI.

We are making the first steps by releasing the software and helping you 
guys, the early adopters, to get started and become the new JPF 
professionals. We expect you, in your turn, to help the next newbies 
when they ask question on the list. And help the project by reporting 
bugs, and perhaps even helping to fix some when possible. But most 
important we expect you to make the community grow, by talking about 
Javeline PlatForm with your friends and peers, writing a blog post when 
you're pleasantly surprised and mention JPF when people ask amazed how 
you did that when they look at your new application.

We are opening our shop this week, but we are not terminating our 
support to the community and are not expecting that you all rush to buy 
a commercial license or support. We do sell support because some 
projects can't rely on goodwill of a community, but need a signed 
commitment from the developers of the library a company is basing their 
whole application on.

We are working hard on writing documentation (reference guide) and some 
important new widgets. Any requests, ideas and other input is welcome. 
We know that the base is better than anything else out there. Together 
we can extend that and make this the best platform for web based 
applications available.

Best regards,
Arnold Daniels