abotar blog

With all the negative news related to Java-based open source in the past couple of months and Sun’s cloudy forecast, the announcement that SmartGWT has arrived is a ray of sunshine.  However, the comment about it using standard LGPL is a little worrisome, and the code license on the project home links directly to gnu.org instead of a clarified version.  I hope that the SmartGWT/SmartClient people follow through with their promise of an explicit LGPL non-contamination clarification within the license itself to match GWT-Ext.

http://abotar.com/blog/2008/08/20/smartclient-to-outsmart-ext-with-smartgwt/#comments

GWT-Ext license

http://gwt-ext.com/license/

In the aftermath of the recent open source turbulence, it seems foolhardy to evangelize any open source framework unless it inspires absolute confidence.  After all, open source frameworks not from a foundation seem to be increasingly likely to change their terms of use unfavorably as they gain popularity.  The creator of SmartGWT has a good record so far with GWT-Ext though, so I will give SmartGWT the benefit of the doubt.

Meanwhile, I will continue with my cautious evaluation of SmartGWT.  If everything works out as well as I hope, it may become a key framework in my RIA toolkit.  So far, SmartGWT looks good from my early evaluation.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 4:50 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.