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When Meteor first launched, I was one of the very very many people who said that Meteor looked amazing, but was afraid that their license would hamper adoption.
by Lazare 15y ago
When Meteor first launched, I was one of the very very many people who said that Meteor looked amazing, but was afraid that their license would hamper adoption.
With the change in license, I think the only major hurdle has been removed. The fundamental idea is good, their current execution is extremely slick, and their immediate plans[1] look achievable. I have very high hopes for the project.
If you haven't checked out Meteor yet, at least watch the screencast:
http://meteor.com/screencast http://meteor.com/screencast
[1]: I originally said roadmap; as mcrider rightly points out Meteor does not have one. There is some info floating around about current development goals (notably related to adding authentication), which is what I was thinking of.
- mcrider 15y agoWhat roadmap? The FAQ says there isn't one. Edit: I figured that's what you meant, I was just curious if you had seen an official roadmap. I guess they are too fresh to have one and are waiting for more community input before formalizing their goals -- Which is fine by me.
- muyuu 15y agoGPL was perfectly fine for a product like Meteor. Unless you plan to modify Meteor, ship your version and not share your changes, there are very few things you can do to violate the GPL by using Meteor. Meteor is neither a library nor boilerplate code to add upon. Lots of folks seem to be "hating" on GPL for no good reason, except maybe not knowing it (which is a good reason but it's hardly justifiable at this point).
- ig1 15y agoNo. If you use a GPL library all of your code has to be released under a GPL compatible licence. The Meteor framework counts as a library due to the way it interacts with your code. You might be confusing it with the Lesser GPL which allows library code to be incorporated into propriety software (or websites in this case). To understand the difference between the two you should read: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
- muyuu 15y agoIt's not a library. Most users of Meteor won't even ship any code at all, they will expose sites/APIs. There's also a difference between interacting of output code and libraries.
- ig1 15y agoThe way Meteor works is that the client side framework is bundled with your code and pushed to the browser of the end user, it's this pushing of the merged framework + your code that counts as distribution under the GPL. The code isn't just run server side. Also you should read the following sections of the GPL faq which should help clarify your understanding of the issues: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatCaseIsOutputGPL http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatCaseIsOutputGPL (the output of a GPL program is also GPL "when the program copies part of itself into the output.") http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation (linking doesn't have to be in the compiler sense of the term any form of tight coupling between code is covered)
- muyuu 15y agoWhat I don't understand well yet is the way Meteor works. I'm waiting until they (and firebase) make their final version available, although I've played a bit with them. If it does bundle itself then it could have implications. Maybe LGPL would be more reasonable then.
- Egregore 15y agoSome products offered under GPL license require you to publish your code if you use it as a library.(ExtJs was one example of this) So MIT license for Meteor will help wider adoption.
- muyuu 15y agoWhy would you want to ship Meteor as a library? Even if you do ship it, if you don't link to it (which I don't even think you will reasonably can) you wouldn't violate GPL.