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Licensing of Titanium chaotic and unclear
- jhaynie 14y agoWe cannot pull an App from the App Store and would never do that if we could. We are drafting a response. Please give us a few minutes to get something up on the Q&A thread on our dev site. http://developer.appcelerator.com/question/142516/warning-licensing-of-titanium-chaotic-and-unclear-how-to-avoid-extortionate-fees http://developer.appcelerator.com/question/142516/warning-li... Jeff (CEO of Appcelerator).
- andrewcooke 14y agoplease also explain how/why the final customer was contacted. knowing nothing about this, it seems like the licencing issue could be a misunderstanding with the developer. but contacting the people that developer was selling to seems very odd. [edit: and... you avoided the issue completely. pity.]
- eclipxe 14y agoHas nothing to do with pulling the app from the app store - it's all about breaking the trust and contacting the customer directly. Bad move.
- SpikeGronim 14y agoThanks for responding here Jeff. The license on https://github.com/appcelerator/titanium_mobile https://github.com/appcelerator/titanium_mobile is Apache 2.0. How can you possibly ask for money from a developer who used Apache 2.0 code? It seems like a black and white issue and that you are in the wrong. Please address the Apache 2.0 license in your response.
- prpatel 14y agoThey don't. I've used Appcelerator for a number of projects that are now on the App store(s) and haven't ever worried about this. The source code is on Github under the Apache license as you mentioned. This is enough for me and my lawyers to not worry about it.
- erichocean 14y agoHow does that possibly prevent their sales people from contacting your customers and demanding $5000 or their app gets pulled?
- tedunangst 14y agoEverything is black and white when you've only heard one side of the story.
- jlgreco 14y agoHe is asking for the other side...
- SpikeGronim 14y agoYes, that was my intent. I was asking for the other side to make a clear response and specifically to mention the Apache license in their response. They made a vague, long winded, PR-speak response which did not address any of the issues. I continue to judge them for bad business practices and ethics. If they provide more evidence that paints a better picture I'll listen.
- programminggeek 14y agoI'm going to just say that I was never a fan of the way that Appcelerator handled their framework from a tooling standpoint. To create an app, you have to register it with them. It felt a bit creepy and unneeded if I wasn't going to use any of their other services. I'm much happier using Phonegap, Knockout, and Kendo Mobile to build apps.
- ianhawes 14y agoNot only that, but each time the app launches, it phones home to Appcelerator. This is by default, and you can only disable it by turning off Analytics in the config.
- mikl 14y agoThis sounds a bit fishy – how could Appcelerator even get an app pulled from the app store? DMCA?
- tszming 14y agoMaybe if the developer is not complying the opensource license [1] e.g. Apache 2.0 >> Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3966116/where-to-put-open-source-credit-information-for-an-iphone-app http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3966116/where-to-put-open...
- adambenayoun 14y agoyou could get an app pulled from the appstore using the DMCA - however if all he did was using the appcelerator module which is licensed under a permissive license (apache v2) - they would have no ground. He's using something else there (perhaps their cloud services who are probably free for free apps and costs money for paid apps).
- protomyth 14y agoHe has a bullet point that says: "Uses no Appcelerator services such as cloud storage, analytics or push notifications"
- adambenayoun 14y agoRight - my bad - missed that
- cube13 14y agoI agree. If the guy's story is correct, it doesn't seem that Appcelerator should have even noticed their usage of the framework at all. Unless it was for a huge client that's gotten hundreds of thousands of downloads(which I don't think is the case), it seems like there's something else going on here.
- adambenayoun 14y agoI bet he is using some elements that are licensed under a commercial license such as the appcelerator analytics and/or the enterprise element. http://www.appcelerator.com/plans-pricing http://www.appcelerator.com/plans-pricing It could also be that an appcelerator salesman was a bit aggressive on that front but I bet this is not the case - 99% of the time, people are breaching licenses without even knowing it.
- ricardobeat 14y agoI think the Enterprise Extensions don't come with the SDK, and the analytics starts with a free tier.
- RandallBrown 14y agoHe says that he isn't using any of those services.
- driverdan 14y agoSounds like a rogue / poorly trained sales person trying to earn their commissions.
- potatolicious 14y agoI never buy this line of reasoning - I've seen too many instances of this to think otherwise. Every time a "rogue" sales person does something bad, it is in response to tacit encouragement and acknowledgment of management, and have been incentivized to behave badly. The "rogue employee", in almost every single case I've ever seen, is just an arms-length way for companies to behave badly while keeping plausible deniability. See: Yelp.
- j_s 14y agoI think the most recent discussion here about 'blame it on a rogue employee/contractor/etc.' on HN revolved around Visa in Brazil: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4396414 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4396414 The problem is, this strategy/dark pattern works.
- driverdan 14y agoTrue, but only when it's not an isolated incident. I know or have spoken with many unpaid Titanium developers and this is the first time I've heard of something like this happening. I haven't seen comments on this thread from someone else experiencing this.
- Maxious 14y agoIf you expand the hidden comments on Jeff's apology, Jeff "co-founder and CEO of the company" explains how proud he has been of the sales people despite "a few complaints": >Was the sales rep over eager and trying to hussle to get a deal? Probably. In my opinion, that's the job of the rep and we work with hundreds of new paying customers each quarter and we've only had a few complaints about it.
- debacle 14y agoIf one of my contractors or vendors ever contacted one of my clients and asked for money I would drop them like a bad habit and never look back.
- pjzedalis 14y agoHow does Appcelerator know who wrote the app? They see an app from a company that offends their licenses, they contact the app owner (not necessarily the developer). Seems legit to me.
- Maxious 14y agoTo be perfectly clear why this is downmodded, in the OP the developer's agency is contacted and asks for clarification. Titanium then contacts his client instead, it was not unnecessary do to so to contact the developer because they were already corresponding.
- pjzedalis 14y agoI guess I still don't understand how Appcelerator knew who the 'design agency' was for the end client. Was the app advertised as being built in Titanium by XYZ firm for ABC firm? To follow up on my original point: The OP makes it seem like Appcelerator is shaking them down after the fact (and breaking the licensing/pricing model advertised for the product) yet there is no evidence of it. No one at Appcelerator has confirmed this has happened nor has anyone else in the comments had a similar issue. It sounds more like Appcelerator reached out to upsell and it was taken/communicated badly.
- franze 14y agothe new "accepted answer" by jeff is a very very poor statement and makes me to never touch Titanium ever. the statement didn't answer any part of the question at all, and does nothing to clarify the situation. marketing speach par exellence. if they debug their code the same way they debug their business processes than titanium would be the windows vista of mobile development frameworks.
- posabsolute 14y agoExactly, It really does not tell me if I can use it to do freelance contract, which is the base of the question...
- mikl 14y agoYeah, it's a complete non-answer. It does not explain at all what might cause AppC to contact clients and demand license agreements.
- prpatel 14y agoThis is a quote from Jeff's response: "To be crystal clear here, our intentions are that we will not charge for development that happens under the “App Explore” product (i.e., the free version). Usage of the Appcelerator platform (Titanium Mobile SDK, Titanium Studio, Analytics and Cloud Services) at this level is permitted for all applications, both commercial and free, with no financial obligation to Appcelerator." Again, APL code on Github. APL is a permissive and "biz friendly" license as we all know.
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- maxwin 14y agoI have been using Titanium for about a year. My past painful experience tells me to never ever use Titanium again. It is buggy. Q & A support sucks big time unless you pay for it. For any advanced project, you will absolutely need to develop custom IOS modules. It will save you so much time and headache to just use objective-C. (note: for simple projects, it might work for you)
- mofle 14y agoI have the exact same experience. I've also reported more than 30 valid bugs, none have been fixed... You wouldn't believe how buggy it is, and the docs are just as bad. Stay away - go native or phonegap
- onetwothreefour 14y ago"Having previously dabbled with Titanium in the past it seemed like the right choice for rapid development and deployment of the app." And that's where you made this a problem of your own making. :) Anyone who uses these glorified WebView wrappers is doing themselves a disservice.
- pmjordan 14y agoAnyone who uses these glorified WebView wrappers is doing themselves a disservice. I've never used it, but my understanding is that Titanium does not run in a web view. It compiles the JS down to C/ObjC, then that gets compiled to native code by Apple's compiler.
- borlak 14y agoAccepted Answer TL;DR: [sorry] we will not charge for development that happens under the “App Explore” product (i.e., the free version). Usage of the Appcelerator platform (Titanium Mobile SDK, Titanium Studio, Analytics and Cloud Services) at this level is permitted for all applications, both commercial and free, with no financial obligation to Appcelerator. [sorry, we aren't transparent enough]
- hhudolet 14y agoWaited for the official answer. It's bad, there's no answer. As someone who started learning Titanium, this is really deal-breaker for me! Off to phonegap, xamarin, or native ...