Hacker News Reader

Comment by bachmeier | Hacker News Reader

> GPL + commercial licensing model changes nothing for commercial product developers.

I'm not sure I understand your comment. This is an Electron alternative. Is it common for companies to release modified versions of Electron? I admit I don't work in this space, but I thought the point of Electron is to make it possible to distribute a web app as a "native" app. Why would a company dig into the source code and develop a modified version of Electron rather than simply use it as a tool to distribute their app?

View on HN

I would suspect that an app that depends on (and is shipped with) a GPL engine gets contaminated with GPL.

If we were talking about LGPL this wouldn't be a question because of the linking exception, but with the GPL no company would want to risk being forced to release their source code. Anyone with a legal department would opt for the commercial licence

Native c/c++ code linking maybe? Linking with native modules may be important to some projects, and that's complicated when the GPL is involved.

> Native c/c++ code linking maybe?

Companies do C/C++ linking to Electron itself in a web app? I'm sorry, but I've never heard of such a thing. Do they also do C/C++ linking to the browser for the web app version fo the app? Web development must really have changed in recent years.

> Companies do C/C++ linking to Electron itself in a web app? I'm sorry, but I've never heard of such a thing.

Yes. Specifically to bridge into native functionality.

> Do they also do C/C++ linking to the browser for the web app version fo the app? Web development must really have changed in recent years.

There might not be a webapp (if the core functionality requires native code). Or it may exist but have a different tech stack involved where the native code can't be used.

> Companies do C/C++ linking to Electron itself in a web app?

That's one of the selling points of Electron, write your frontend in whatever JS framework your frontend devs want to use, provide hooks through node modules to your application where the heavy lifting is done using whatever language/runtime you want.

> Do they also do C/C++ linking to the browser for the web app version fo the app?

If a web version can exists (Electron apps cover spaces that web apps can't), and it's identical to your Electron app, then your Electron app never needed to be written in the first place.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com