Clarification on Appcelerator relationship

[Kevin Whinnery]

Hi everybody,

Recently there has been some confusion around the legal status of the desktop codebase, and the official position of Appcelerator as it pertains to supporting the Tide SDK project.  I wanted to clarify both of those items, so that everyone knows where Appcelerator stands.

The source code located at https://github.com/appcelerator/titanium_desktop is open source under the terms of the Apache 2.0 license.  As such, it can be forked, modified and redistributed under the terms of the Apache 2.0 license, and is not covered or impacted by the licenses applied to other Appcelerator products, such as Titanium Studio.  However, "Appcelerator Titanium" and the Titanium Ribbon logo are registered trademarks of Appcelerator, Inc., and may not be used by Tide SDK or in any derivative works.

Appcelerator is focused on building our mobile platform, and our entire organization must be dedicated to that goal.  Thus, we cannot commit to any ongoing financial, administrative, or development support relationships. With that said, we do want to remain open to supporting this community on a case-by-case basis.  If there are specific requests that can be accommodated, we want to assist in those instances.  We would ask for those requests to be made of our developer relations team, which can be contacted via e-mail at community at appcelerator dot com.

Hopefully this helps clarify our original position.  Please direct any questions or concerns to community at appcelerator dot com.

Thanks,

-Kevin

--

Kevin Whinnery

Director of Developer Relations

Appcelerator, Inc.

 

kwhi...@appcelerator.com

Mobile: (651) 208-0532

Skype: kevin.whinnery

http://www.appcelerator.com

 

Appcelerator Inc.

The Next Generation Mobile Platform

[Tom Jeffries]

Kevin, it is my understanding that there is a small amount of money involved in providing the server for the Tide SDK, and that Appcelerator is unwilling to keep the server up- I don't know the details, and I may be misunderstanding.

Please understand that Tide SDK is a key factor for many companies that are deciding whether to use Titanium for apps.  If TideSDK is available and supported, then we can use a very similar platform to deliver both desktop and mobile apps.  If it is not, then we will look elsewhere for development environments for both desktop and mobile apps.  In other words, not supporting Tide SDK means that there will be companies that do not use Titanium for mobile apps.

I appreciate your consideration of this matter.

--
Tom Jeffries, Founder and CEO

www.Safe-Xchange.com

360-421-8931

Skype tjeffries

[Kevin Whinnery]

Hi Tom,

As I mentioned, we are open to supporting the project on a case-by-case basis.  If there are accommodations that can be made for specific, one-time actions on our part, we can explore that.  However, per our original announcement, we will not be supporting or maintaining uptime on desktop packaging servers or related infrastructure.

I understand your desire to want a similar platform for both mobile and desktop, but right now Appcelerator is focused on mobile platforms.  Hopefully we can still be of assistance in your mobile development efforts.

-Kevin

[Tom Jeffries]

Kevin, 

If we felt assured that both mobile and desktop versions would be available, you would be our first choice and be way ahead of other options.  It seems to me there is some question about desktops, which immediately makes your mobile option one of many possibilities for us to examine.

Yes, mobile is hot.  Does that mean desktop is going away?  I don't think so.

[EthraZa]

+1 to Tom

Probably Sencha will captalize on the developers that are going away from Appcelerator because of the TiSDK show stop as soon as Sencha ION come out. Right today I was in a talk with my boss on the possibility to acquire Sencha Archtect if we decide to move to Sencha Touch + ION in the future.
Is true that the device API of touch mobile is very weaky compared to Titanium Mobile, but for most Apps, Touch is going to sufice and the great possibility to use exactly the same code on Desktop, with ION, and even on web, maybe even port to ExtJs if needed, will make all the difference.
Looks like I'm marketing Sencha here but in fact I'm sad with Appcelerator. Titanium is powerfull but the desktop is too important in some cases and now Titanium has nothing over there.

[Chris Banford [Webascent]]

Hi list,

I can understand and appreciate both side on this and am wondering what we can do pro-actively to push thing forwards regardless?

What specific types and amounts of servers are needed by TideSDK community to get the ball rolling? A github account and website seem to already be up.

• A Jenkins machine to do C.I. on?
• A Build server to (do what exactly)?
• Something else??
  

David, could you put together a list of materials/costs that are needed to get this rolling?


Once we have an idea of what's needed, then I see three options:

1. Appcelerator chips in something to help get things rolling.
2. We on this list go break our Piggy-banks and come up with the dosh, or offer space on existing servers that could be co-opted.
   
3. We put up a Kick-starter project and all contribute to it -- and get Appcelerator to do a quick marketing email to those who might still be interested to contribute as well.
   

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
-Chris

Kevin, it is my understanding that there is a small amount of money involved in providing the server for the Tide SDK, and that Appcelerator is unwilling to keep the server up- I don't know the details, and I may be misunderstanding.

Please understand that Tide SDK is a key factor for many companies that are deciding whether to use Titanium for apps.  If TideSDK is available and supported, then we can use a very similar platform to deliver both desktop and mobile apps.  If it is not, then we will look elsewhere for development environments for both desktop and mobile apps.  In other words, not supporting Tide SDK means that there will be companies that do not use Titanium for mobile apps.

I appreciate your consideration of this matter.

-- 

*******************
Chris Banford
ch...@dihedrals.com
www.dihedrals.com
*******************

[Tom Jeffries]

Great ideas, Chris.

[fairwinds]

The legal issue is an important one I first raised when encountering the over-reaching language of TiStudio at about the time TiDeveloper was replaced. When Appc announced the end of the line for TiDesktop, the issue was raised again. Indeed Jeff Haynie, your CEO recognized the legal issue on Feb 25 and publicly committed to fixing this on this same mailing list. It was raised yet again during discussions of the leadership team on more that a single occasion with assurances of a resolution. We have been months without action and the lack of legal clarity remains an encumbrance to the open source Apache 2 license (since virtually all users of the SDK's or Kroll have at least evaluated the TiStudio product).

When it appeared the project was in jeopardy, I stepped into the Project Lead position. I did so on the basis of your commitments to put the legal issue to bed. I advised at the time I could not move forward on the project without legal clarity. Publicly on the #tidesdk channel, you advised that Nina your internal lawyer was given the task of resolving this issue as a priority for TiDesktop and Kroll. This conversation was logged. There can be no doubt about your commitments to the team. Before saying anything more publicly on behalf of the project, can you advise whether your are speaking with the authority of your senior administration?

This is an important clarification as it not typical for the public commitment of the CEO of the corporation to be undermined. I would much rather a productive resolution than this obstruction you have put before our team. Further, I have received email from Sandeep Johri concerning a request for a face-to-face skype. I am seeking a proper resolution for the community. A proper resolution is one that ends with honored commitments and pledges of support. Lastly, it is in our joint interest that the community continue benefitting from this great software (but managed by a dedicated team of open developers).

David Pratt

TideSDK Project Lead

[fairwinds]

Hi Chris. The document outlining our specific requests is here:

https://github.com/TideSDK/TideSDK/wiki/Appcelerator-requests

We have had a pledge today for a ci system for which we are immensely grateful. The issue with this arrangement is that we would not be able to conduct network packaging for users as we wanted. Our goal was to put a system in place to serve double duty. As ci for devs and queued network packaging for users.

The issues are more complex than just the equipment. The project needs legal clarity. The encumbrance in the TiStudio license must be removed. It is a serious issue that we cannot solve on our own. Lastly, knowledge of TiDesktop must be successfully transferred as we build our team. Currently we are doing well but there are gaps and there will be a need for technical consultation periodically in the short term.

We were please to have the support of Marshall Culpepper. While he can't be directly involved, he has graciously offered his time for a Q&A so that we may benefit from his knowledge. We have communicated the session for those interested on the Appc Q&A, twitter, and on our mailing list. It will be held on the #tidesdk irc channel at 3PM EDT tomorrow (June 15).

I think the first thing before looking at alternatives it to shore the commitments pledged that have been made at the most senior level of the company. I am hoping that a 15 min skype with Sandeep can resolve this satisfactorily. I have been frank about our needs which are reasonable. A few of us have been committing substantial hours moving things forward. I am committed to a release candidate quickly so that the community can see TideSDK is an effort they will be able to rely on.

Regards, 

David

[Jeff Haynie]

Hey guys

I'm not sure how much more clear we need to be around the license for desktop. The code in github is Apache 2. However Studio is not. Studio is not the issue here. It's not OSS and never has been. It is however free. But studio is not required for desktop and shouldn't need to be considered as part of the TideSDK and likely would never be part of Studio anyway.

On the issue of packaging, our build server simply invoked the package scripts that are already available as part of the source and are open source. The wrapper code simply did work to add the build to our DB and some other Appcelerator cloud type stuff. It's is little less than 500 lines of code and wouldn't be useful if we did OSS it.

You have our moral and some limited financial support. I think that is reasonable.


Sent from my iPhone

[Paco Zarate]

Hi Jeff!

It's nice to see you joining this conversation. (Jeff is Appcelerator's co-founder and current CEO)

We are willing to work together to get TideSDK as a community project, we need your backup in order to get it consolidated.

I see some important areas to work between Appcelerator and TideSDK community; let me share you:

1. For the legal stuff, the concern is with clause 2.3 (License Restrictions) included on
http://studio.appcelerator.com/license.html (April 16, 2012) that says:
"[...]    Accordingly, except    as    expressly    permitted    in    this    Agreement,    Customer    agrees    not    to    and   shall    not    allow    any    third    party    to: [...] (g)    modify    any    open    source    version    of   Appcelerator's    software    source    code    ("Original    Code")    to    develop    a   
separately    maintained    source    code    program    (the    "Forked    Software")    so    that   
such    modifications    are    not    automatically    integrated    with    the    Original    Code    or   
so    that    the    Forked    Software    has    features    not    present    in    the    Original    Code;"

I think we need a Community Promise that legally binds the commitment through which Appcelerator pledges to not assert this clause against TideSDK project.

2. We need Appcelerator strongly support the TideSDK transition. The most important requirement is on knowledge. I think that some good common goals would be:
- To have the building process completed on the community side. (Done)
- To have the Unit testing working on the community side.(In progress)
- To have the documentation (technical/end user) that Appcelerator can provide TideSDK github. (In progress)
- To have the CI infrastructure configured for generating the builds.(Pending)
- To have the network packaging working on the community side. (Pending)
The manpower for this has to be provided by the community, but the coaching for this is on Appcelerator side. Can you commit on this coaching to be provided? Is it possible to schedule some sessions to support this?

3. Infrastructure. It's important that Appcelerator share some info on this area. How many servers are dedicated to TiDesktop, which system requirements they have, what's the size that you estimate for the installed user base (in order to provide network packaging), how many daily requests do you have for network packaging. It's important also to know how Appcelerator can help us on this part: (if it can be on hosting, server, server upgrades, third party hosting contacts/donators, etc)

4. Financial. You stated that appcelerator can provide limited financial support. Can you clarify the areas where you see this can be applied?

5. Network Packaging. Can you give more info on why do you consider that those 500 lines are not useful?
I think this feature is something developers appreciate because it's a simple way to get the crossplatform goal. I see it as an important value and wish this could still be provided by the community.

6. TiStudio Integration. I'm not sure if there is someone that develops on command line their TiDesktop apps.  I think it is important to define a roadmap for the tooling transition. I guess that the first releases can use the current TiStudio version, while preparing the move to Aptana or another IDE. We really need Appcelerator advise on this move.

7. Technical support. After having the project on its road, we will need some technical support. I think this can be handled case by case. Just we need to know if you can left the door open to collaborate together.

Thanks in advance Jeff

Paco Zarate.

[fairwinds]

Hi Jeff and thank you for your post. Paco points to the clause in question. There has been an awareness of this for a very long time. Commitments have been made over and over with no action on this issue and it was promised to us several times. For the sake of moving forward and ending this circular discussion, I am asking you to live up to the public commitments you made to the project Feb 25 to ensure we are not encumbered by the clause in question. Further, it is our intention to move, as we can, to a non-profit organization. We want this type of eventual move to be one that is not complicated by this language.

I had clearly identified the kind of support necessary to see the transition succeed. To my knowledge the domains we use have been paid by Sharry and not reimbursed by thus the level of Appc's support may be limited to our github subscription at this time. Our expectations for Appc go beyond this and we have clarified to you that meaningful support involves legal, finanical, and technical consultation. A summary of our requests are here:

https://github.com/TideSDK/TideSDK/wiki/Appcelerator-requests

There were discussions leading to the preparation of this document. I had also asked that Appc set aside some funds that could be used for bounties for critical bug fixes to encourage skilled developers to begin exploring the code base and contributing to the project. I had identified a figure for this. I indicated this should be managed by your company (as we make requests since we are not a legal entity at this time) to manage the financial aspects. We would simply document our requests and an amount for a bounty on a case by case basis.

We originally had Kevin agreement to this together with hard costs such as servers, hosting, domains etc. These are not my words but Kevin's that you will see in the irc transcript in the request document. That said, I prepared a reasonable budget based a combination of vm instances and 2 mac mini's in colocation. We don't have the machines to colocate, thus they were included in our startup budget to arrive at the $2104 requested. The ongoing monthly cost is $797. In my view these amounts are not easily reduced unless there is an offer to host or someone were to purchase equipment on our behalf. Internally within the team we have had some discussions but the bottom line is our ci and packaging system must be reliable and available for our efforts and both the scale and size of the vms is reasonable for the use case.

The amounts are large enough that no developer can easily take these expenses out of pocket. The fact that we need colocation for the minis means a contract. We are not yet a legal entity. Thus, we had requested that these arrangements be made by Appc so we have use of the equipment but that billing not come back to any developer to be out of pocket until there is some form of reimbursement.

The requests are reasonable given that this transition benefits both Appc and project for the benefit of the community. I believe this is our goal and also your stated goal identified in the announcement on your official blog about discontinuing TiDesktop and transitioning to a community project.

Our financial requests here for hard costs have been denied after pledges of support. Kevin's public announcement yesterday suggests vacillation again on the commitments made. You are indicating limited financial support and I am also. A figure of approximately $800 per month on an ongoing basis once we got the minis in colo together with financial requests on a case by case basis to support bounties in the short term and the sort of technical consultation we require to properly inherit the code base. I think this is reasonable. One other area of support that could be extremely helpful is in legal support for transition to a non profit organization so that we collect donations or determine other possible revenue streams long term financial support of the project.

I requested a meeting by skype with Sandeep to resolve this with face to face discussion and was hopeful this would end this with a joint announcement to the community on a positive resolution (and affirmation of Appc's commitment to the initiative). I am available to get this worked out this way as opposed to a public forum. The ongoing financial commitment is small in contrast to your revenues and 50.2 million received in capital. Appc is now #2 on momentum index:

http://momentumindex.com/100-open-source-companies-ranked-by-momentum-index/

I am hopeful that your success from revenues earned from the companies, developers and businesses (that comprise our ecosystem) will translate to a financial commitment that extends to the sum we have requested and to fund occasional bounty requests at the very least.

On the issue of technical consultation, Paco has hit on some of the issues involved. There are also touch points for coordinated effort with respect to any potential TiStudio or Aptana integration.

David Pratt

TideSDK Project Lead

[Kevin Whinnery]

Chris,

I think this is a valid way to proceed.  Requests for co-marketing support and maybe even some level of financial contribution for targeted needs are very reasonable requests to make.  No commitments until we know the specifics, of course, but I think you have the right idea on how to work with us.

-Kevin

[fairwinds]

Kevin. The projects legal, financial and technical needs have been documented and communicated. Your CEO has intervened and we are awaiting a position on concrete support we can relay upon. Preferably this will be resolved with a face-to-face discussion. We will be able to market together and make decisions as a project on this basis.

[Micheal Cottingham]

I think I'm little confused here.

https://github.com/TideSDK/TideSDK/blob/master/LICENSE, the license affecting the desktop, is a standard Apache 2.0 license.

http://studio.appcelerator.com/license.html, which apparently redirects to http://www.appcelerator.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/www/appc-appexplore-agreement.pdf, says this:

modify any open source version of Appcelerator's software source code ("Original Code") to develop a separately maintained source code program (the "Forked Software") so that such modifications are not automatically integrated with the Original Code or so that the Forked Software has features not present in the Original Code

I don't see the issue with this. All it's saying is that if you make changes to any open source code, you have to send them upstream. This is an AGPL-type clause (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html). I'm not a fan of AGPL for this and other reasons, but in and of itself, there's nothing wrong with AGPL. It seems to me, that's what Appcelerator is doing here, is throwing in a similar clause. But this doesn't affect desktop anyway: APPCELERATOR LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR APPCELERATOR APP EXPLORE, TITANIUM STUDIO, AND TITANIUM MOBILE SDK PRODUCTS. So there's no mention of Desktop in there. And since Appcelerator is no longer maintaining desktop, they don't care about you sending changes upstream.

This is a non-issue as far as I can see.

As for the costs, I think you guys can go cheaper.

While I don't know exactly what the needs are as far as server resources, bandwidth, etc., there seems to me to be cheaper alternatives.

Ubuntu (no mention of OS on CI/monitoring server) from Linode: 1GB of RAM, 40GB HD space, 400GB bandwidth: $40
Fedora: 1GB of RAM, 40GB HD space, 400GB bandwidth: $40
Ubuntu: 1GB of RAM, 40GB HD space, 400GB bandwidth: $40
Mac Mini x2: $100
Windows: $57 (http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/?scenario=virtual-machines#)

This is your monthly cost, so that comes to a total of: $277. Muuuuuuuch cheaper than the rackspace quote. And the nice thing about Linode is that it pools the bandwidth, so if one server is using 500GB and another is using 200GB, well, that's fine, because it's all in a general pool as opposed to per server. I'm not sure what the start-up costs are, but this seems to be a fair bit cheaper. Again, this comes down to Appcelerator giving you guys numbers as far as resources, bandwidth, how many users can be handled at a given time, etc., but like I said, it seems to me that cheaper alternatives are out there.

[Micheal Cottingham]

Okay, so I looked at the PDF (I don't remember seeing that before ...) and have a revised cost list:

http://www.linode.com/

For 2GB, 80GB HDs, 800GB bandwidth each, it is $80 a pop.

So 3 machines: 240
Mac Minis x2: 80
Windows 2008: 284 (400m storage transactions, 800GB bandwidth)

604. Still cheaper monthly than rackspace. And you can probably find cheaper Windows hosting as well.

[fairwinds]

Hi Michael. The fact that the clause states "modify any open source version of Appcelerator's software source code" does not mean the software needs to be identified. It is meant to capture what is says - "any". We want the LICENSE to be unencumbered. It is an Apache 2 License and wish to make no changes to its status or have any special requirements that force developers of TideSDK into any such relationship.

Your costs are not apples to apples. We can obtain somewhat lower costs for servers if we lower the RAM requirements. That said, the objective is to run the machines as dual duty (ci for devs and packaging for users). 2GB for this is reasonable, and is not excessive. Keep in mind, we do not own the minis. Each mini only has a colo expense of 49.00 per month but they must be first purchased.

Hope that helps.

David

[Micheal Cottingham]

That's why I went back and did 2GB, which still came out to be cheaper than the Rackspace quote. The PDF says 2GB, so I did 2GB. Seems apples to apples to me.

As far as the license, they cannot legally apply that clause to an Apache 2.0 License, so that is a non-issue as well.

[fairwinds]

Hi Michael: Sorry I missed that and thank you for identifying some additional options. On the license, the TiStudio license is as much a contract as any legal agreement with implications. It has no bearing on anyone to use TideSDK. That said, it does have an impact on those developing TideSDK who may have have accepted the TiStudio license. Given that our development team is going to largely consist of folks who have developed a TiApp, it is most likely they have used or evaluated TiStudio. I hope that clarifies things.

Regards,

David

[Paco Zarate]

Did anyone have some experience on godaddy VPS hosting?
OS: Windows Server
2008 Standard 64-bit
• RAM: 2 GB
• Storage: 30 GB‡‡
• Bandwidth: 2,000 GB/mo
39.99 USD/mo

http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/virtual-dedicated-servers.aspx?ci=9013

[Tom Jeffries]

I've had considerable experience with GoDaddy in several ways and have not been happy.  We have a dedicated server with Codero right now that costs us $115/month, I don't know if that would help or not but they do a good job of keeping things running.

[Chris Banford [Webascent]]

Hi list,

To toss in my 2 cents --
I've been using Hetzner (German based) for years and they've been fantastic. Their servers are fantastic value (although they don't offer any Mac hosting), for example a dedicated server (EX 4) goes for 49 Euros ($ 62.-) a month and offers:

Intel® Core™ i7-2600 Quad-Core
inkl. Hyper-Threading-Technology

• RAM 16 GB DDR3 RAM
• Hard disks 2 x 3 TB SATA 6Gb/s HDD
• 7200 rpm (Software-RAID 1)
• Network card 1 GBit On-Board 100 MBit
• Backup Space 100 GB
• Traffic Unlimited*

http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex4

I can recommend them totally in case this helps with planning future server resources.

Cheers,
-Chris

As for the costs, I think you guys can go cheaper.

While I don't know exactly what the needs are as far as server resources, bandwidth, etc., there seems to me to be cheaper alternatives.

Ubuntu (no mention of OS on CI/monitoring server) from Linode: 1GB of RAM, 40GB HD space, 400GB bandwidth: $40
Fedora: 1GB of RAM, 40GB HD space, 400GB bandwidth: $40
Ubuntu: 1GB of RAM, 40GB HD space, 400GB bandwidth: $40
Mac Mini x2: $100
Windows: $57 (http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/?scenario=virtual-machines#)

-- 

*******************
Chris Banford
CEO Dihedrals Ltd.
ch...@dihedrals.com
www.dihedrals.com
*******************

[Chris Banford [Webascent]]

Godaddy === three thumbs down.
-Chris

I've had considerable experience with GoDaddy in several ways and have not been happy.  We have a dedicated server with Codero right now that costs us $115/month, I don't know if that would help or not but they do a good job of keeping things running.

-- 

*******************
Chris Banford
*******************

[Micheal Cottingham]

That's the thing, it doesn't apply to TideSDK. For starters, the license states that it does not apply to the desktop. Then the desktop is licensed under a different license so they cannot legally hold the desktop to that clause anyway. Finally, Appcelerator no longer claims the desktop, so they cannot enforce any license changes made after they let go of the product. They cannot force anybody to submit changes upstream for a product they don't own. TideSDK is in the clear to continue development.

[fairwinds]

Hi. Am not sure I can make this clearer. The TiStudio license applies to "any" open source software from Appc. It does not need to be spelled specifically in the Agreement as it is "any". "any" by reference includes TiDesktop. Anyone who has used or demoed TiStudio accepted its license terms. It is more likely that TideSDK developers will have had exposure to TiStudio as they are working on a former Appc product that they are familiar with. That said, they are bound by the terms of the license and this clause if they have every had contact with TiStudio. This change in the licensing policy between TiDeveloper and TiStudio was not adequately communicated to developers. It was assumed developers would simply follow to the next product in the succession - and they have for the most part. This left the Apache 2 license not so open as Appc claims for anyone that used or demoed TiStudio.

When TideSDK is licensed as Apache 2 for users, there is no such impact. The only potential impact is upon our developers and this is at the heart of the issue. It matters little one way or another that Appc discontinued TiDesktop. The legalities are not analogous to squatters rights. We cannot lay claim to something under our term on the basis Appc dropped the product. The simple fact is that Appc retains copyright to the code and folks that agree to use or develop from their code do so under the terms of their license agreements. If a developer used or demoed TiStudio and then develops TideSDK, they are impacted by the Apache 2 license in addition to the proprietary license agreement. Is that clear?

David

[Micheal Cottingham]

I don't think what I'm explaining is clear.

The license applies to: "APPCELERATOR APP EXPLORE, TITANIUM STUDIO, AND TITANIUM MOBILE SDK PRODUCTS" There is no any there. They specifically limit what products it covers in that statement. They do that again here: "The
effective date of this Agreement ("Effective Date") is the earlier of the date that Customer downloads or uses the Appcelerator App Explore, and/or Titanium Studio, and/or Titanium Mobile SDK products (“Product(s)”) respectively." Again, there is no "any" here. That license applies to specific products and does not include Titanium Desktop.

Next, the clause that you are concerned about cannot legally be applied to Apache 2. It cannot. They cannot force anybody using an Apache 2-released product of Appcelerator's to submit changes upstream. The two licenses are mutually exclusive. And since they do not claim Titanium Desktop under this license, it does not matter anyway. Again, there is no "any" there. That license applies to specific products.

Then that license has a date of April 16, 2012. Titanium Desktop was given up by Appcelerator in January. There can be no binding agreement for a product they do not own.

Micheal

[Micheal Cottingham]

I'd like to know where this any comes from, because from what I'm seeing, it isn't in there. Is there another license somewhere? Was there communication previously with Appcelerator where they stated that it was any product? The license limits what products are covered and cannot be expanded without modification to that license.

[fairwinds]

clause 2.3 (License Restrictions) included on 

http://studio.appcelerator.com/license.html (April 16, 2012) that says: 

"[...] Accordingly, except as expressly permitted in this Agreement, Customer agrees not to and shall not allow any third party to: [...] (g) modify any open source version of Appcelerator's software source code ("Original Code") to develop a separately maintained source code program (the "Forked Software") so that such modifications are not automatically integrated with the Original Code or so that the Forked Software has features not present in the Original Code;"

Appc created a circumstance where the licensing of TiStudio software has impact upon "any" open source version of Appc's code that is forked to create another. Does that that have a possible impact on TideSDK devs. Answer is yes. Am not sure how you equate discontinuation of a product with a product they don't own. Ownership is implied in copyrights and licenses. If we build upon these works, we work within the rules. In our circumstance, I have asked for amendments to eliminate to remove any encumbrance.

How enforceable is this? Don't know and don't care. I simply want the claused removed or modified as Appc's CEO advised he would have fixed so that our efforts of our project are in no way tangled up with this type of language.

David

[Micheal Cottingham]

Fair enough.

I interpret that clause to mean any of the aforementioned licensed products because the license has already defined what products are covered in that license, so any here refers to those specific products. However, I understand the confusion. I think instead of waiting around for Appcelerator to respond, contact an open source project lawyer. There's a few organizations around that offer legal services for open source projects. Based on my legal experience with open source projects, my guess is the lawyer is probably going to agree that any refers the above products.

The reason I say they don't own the product is because they gave up rights to it, they no longer have claim to it or what happens to it. If they simply discontinued it, they wouldn't have offered it up for anybody to take over control. Copyrights are a separate issue, but as I said, my own legal experience with open source projects makes me think that the license isn't a problem here.

Cheers,
Micheal

[fairwinds]

Sure, I appreciate what you are saying. My plan is to move to a non-profit org from where we are currently. It will take time. This effort will occur simultaneously with development on the code base. It is necessary for a variety of reasons, but foremost because the project's viability is dependent upon finances beside human resources. It will need to find its own means of deriving revenues to survive and expand - whether this is through donations or other means. If we lack what we need to continue, there will be no project and no further efforts in my view.

There is no doubt that their will be a legal review. That said, I want the project on a clean slate legally for our developers today. I also want our contributors on the same page at the outset. This means that they will be committing to the "project" where in time the project shall become a legal entity possessing the code, copyright, marks, brands, and components of our identity such as domains. JQuery, Twisted and many other great open projects have gone this direction to become a Foundation. Thus a contributor must assigning the rights of their contribution to the project through a Contributors Agreement at the outset to ensure the complexity of transitioning to an org is mitigated. The transition will occur as soon as it viable to do so. We are only at the beginning of something I expect to be an interesting journey.

I am taking stock of our human resources this coming week and flattening our structure to ensure the project is run as a meritocracy where those contributing the most effort will have a greater stake in determining the future of the project. We will rely on constant communication between peers. There will be few meetings going forward but more dialog through commit messages, our irc channel and natural discussions that occur between folks dedicated to the efforts.

I am keen to leave the past in the past and would like Appc to cooperate with us and help us on our way. In general whether intentional or not, we feel there has been obstruction where this can be easily replaced by cooperation and coodination. There are benefits to us both if we can see our way through the current situation. That starts with a meeting and can end with a joint effort to communicate a great message to the community.

David

[fairwinds]

Hang in there Tom. We're not going away. You will have both. Just got to get through this rough patch and put it behind us. Expectations being what they are, we are optimistic that Appc will come around as momentum increases to a release. We are getting more folks signing up on ml, more tweets, messages of support and beginning to build a good following. We have also had offers of equipment, prizes as bounties for upgrades/bug fixes and hope this might kick start others to offer same. We also had a good turn out for 

the Marshall Culpepper Q & A this past Friday.

https://github.com/TideSDK/TideSDK/wiki/Q-&-A-with-Marshall-Culpepper

We are looking for a similar event with Josh of Appc to advertise to the community and to gather further insight on some of current issues and his experimental work with CEF. We'd like to see it committed to the project as a contribution in fact so that others can also hack on this (as part of this investigation).

Regards

David

On Thursday, June 14, 2012 4:01:33 PM UTC-3, Tom Jeffries wrote:

Kevin, 

If we felt assured that both mobile and desktop versions would be available, you would be our first choice and be way ahead of other options.  It seems to me there is some question about desktops, which immediately makes your mobile option one of many possibilities for us to examine.

Yes, mobile is hot.  Does that mean desktop is going away?  I don't think so.

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 11:11 AM, Kevin Whinnery <kevin.w...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Tom,

As I mentioned, we are open to supporting the project on a case-by-case basis.  If there are accommodations that can be made for specific, one-time actions on our part, we can explore that.  However, per our original announcement, we will not be supporting or maintaining uptime on desktop packaging servers or related infrastructure.

I understand your desire to want a similar platform for both mobile and desktop, but right now Appcelerator is focused on mobile platforms.  Hopefully we can still be of assistance in your mobile development efforts.

-Kevin

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Tom Jeffries <t...@safe-xchange.com> wrote:

Kevin, it is my understanding that there is a small amount of money involved in providing the server for the Tide SDK, and that Appcelerator is unwilling to keep the server up- I don't know the details, and I may be misunderstanding.

Please understand that Tide SDK is a key factor for many companies that are deciding whether to use Titanium for apps.  If TideSDK is available and supported, then we can use a very similar platform to deliver both desktop and mobile apps.  If it is not, then we will look elsewhere for development environments for both desktop and mobile apps.  In other words, not supporting Tide SDK means that there will be companies that do not use Titanium for mobile apps.

I appreciate your consideration of this matter.

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Kevin Whinnery <kevin.w...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi everybody,

Recently there has been some confusion around the legal status of the desktop codebase, and the official position of Appcelerator as it pertains to supporting the Tide SDK project.  I wanted to clarify both of those items, so that everyone knows where Appcelerator stands.

The source code located at https://github.com/appcelerator/titanium_desktop is open source under the terms of the Apache 2.0 license.  As such, it can be forked, modified and redistributed under the terms of the Apache 2.0 license, and is not covered or impacted by the licenses applied to other Appcelerator products, such as Titanium Studio.  However, "Appcelerator Titanium" and the Titanium Ribbon logo are registered trademarks of Appcelerator, Inc., and may not be used by Tide SDK or in any derivative works.

Appcelerator is focused on building our mobile platform, and our entire organization must be dedicated to that goal.  Thus, we cannot commit to any ongoing financial, administrative, or development support relationships. With that said, we do want to remain open to supporting this community on a case-by-case basis.  If there are specific requests that can be accommodated, we want to assist in those instances.  We would ask for those requests to be made of our developer relations team, which can be contacted via e-mail at community at appcelerator dot com.

Hopefully this helps clarify our original position.  Please direct any questions or concerns to community at appcelerator dot com.

Thanks,

-Kevin

--

Kevin Whinnery

Director of Developer Relations

Appcelerator, Inc.

 

kwhi...@appcelerator.com

Mobile: (651) 208-0532

Skype: kevin.whinnery

http://www.appcelerator.com

 

Appcelerator Inc.

The Next Generation Mobile Platform

--
Tom Jeffries, Founder and CEO

www.Safe-Xchange.com

360-421-8931

Skype tjeffries

--

Kevin Whinnery

Director of Developer Relations

Appcelerator, Inc.

 

kwhi...@appcelerator.com

Mobile: (651) 208-0532

Skype: kevin.whinnery

http://www.appcelerator.com

 

Appcelerator Inc.

The Next Generation Mobile Platform