
Sencha Touch 1.0 Released - License Drops from $99 to $0 - bjonathan
http://www.sencha.com/products/touch/
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msy
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.

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steilpass
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.

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bobds
It's free because it's bad.

[https://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.javascript/browse_...](https://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.javascript/browse_frm/thread/ab729e7cd6ee78f6/78049664b10416ec)

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mhd
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/>

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bobds
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.

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

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boucher
Completely different products.

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

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rudd
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.

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

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evgen
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.

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

