Sencha Touch 1.0 Released - License Drops from $99 to $0 | Hacker News Reader

Sencha Touch 1.0 Released - License Drops from $99 to $0

sencha.com

45 pointsbjonathan16 comments

Looks like jQuery Mobile put the wind up them. I'd find it hard to justify investing time in the Sencha platform even if it is 'free' - the licence is still commercial and development is still closed, why take the risk when jQuery Mobile is evolving so rapidly anyway.

Its funny how I didn't mind paying 100$ but the closed development doesn't cut it for me. I had a small patch and there was no way to commit it. A Git repository seems to be a minimum requirement nowadays.

I agree... it doesn't make sense to move to Sencha if you're already familiar with jQuery

It's free because it's bad.

https://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.javascript/browse_...

That's from David Mark, who's on some kind of vendetta against any JavaScript library but his own. Came up here on HN quite often… (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=993398 )

Now, this is where it gets a bit weird: http://davidmarkfans.wordpress.com/

I don't care much for the style of David Mark's rhetoric, but he is not only one to criticize Sencha in that thread. While David doesn't manage to get his point across very effectively, let's consider some of popular JS libraries:

Prototype.js: Messes with the prototype of all your objects, that can't be good.

ExtJS: Big enterprisey clusterfuck, though the widgets look pretty good.

jQuery: I do use jQuery but last time I browsed through its source I was appalled by all the dirty hacks. The plugin situation is an unmaintanable clusterfuck. The UI library is still lacking after years of development.

I hope the popularity of node.js will drive the development of new and better JS libraries, because our current situation is unimpressive.

Agreed. The demos on their own website left me very unimpressed. Simple things like the back button on my Droid X taking me out of the app and back to their /demo/ page after I had performed a click action or two.

Titanium by appcelerator was and is free since starting. Logical move by Sencha, I guess.

Completely different products.

Still costs money if you want to use it for commercial applications, no?

My mistake. When I checked after their announcement yesterday they had not updated their store page (http://www.sencha.com/store/touch/). Also, their license was a bit confusing to me, and I thought it was only free for those who wished to make their entire application open source.

Not according to their site. It says: "And now, we’re making it available free of charge for commercial or use under the GPL"

Yes

Edit: No. ExtJS costs money, but it looks like Sencha Touch is free for everyone, as others have noted.

Is it possible for Sencha to start charging developers or users at some point in the future under the commercial license?

Yes. The prior iteration of this library (ExtJS) did a license bait-and-switch before and anyone who trusts them to not change the conditions at some future point is a fool.

Demos don't work on my droid. I keep getting the "Visit this site on your iPad" box.

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