ExtJS 4.1 Licence Adobe ColdFusion 2016

[Sportsmans]

I was recently contacted by Sencha's attorney stating that we owe them a licence fee for use of ExtJS 4.1.  My understanding is that it is included in the Adobe ColdFusion 2016 licencing since it is built into the software ie: cflayout, cfgrid etc..  Can you provide the license agreement information regarding ExtJs 4.1 as it pertains to my Adobe ColdFusion 2016 software?

[Charlie Arehart]

Chad, while you also asked about this in a comment on my blog (a few hours after you posted this, I see). I will answer here instead, and point folks there to this thread for further discussion.

So first, I don't work for Adobe, and you can't take what I say as authoritative.  But on the surface, I'd think there would be no justification for them to be asking you to pay for it--at least assuming that the only use of it (in term of what they see) is in JS generated from CF's tags/functions/features that leverage such Ajax features.

If you are instead calling JS code yourself, that may be another matter.

On that first point, it could be that this is just some overly aggressive effort (perhaps even by some 3rd party, acting as a bounty hunter, who reported it to them), where the person observing it is not aware that CF bundles it, and therefore no license should be required for someone who licenses CF and has code generated by CF's Ajax features which themselves leverage Ext.

But on the second, if you ARE using the library by your own calls, it could be that in THAT case one needs to license it. I've never heard of it before myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's possible. Adobe has never said specifically (that I know of) that we were free to call the underlying libraries ourselves.

As for what i document above, that's just because some people have complained over the years when noticing that CF might be using some then-old version of a given library. I wanted to highlight for folks the versions of libraries CF did use at least as of the initial release of CF2016.

I will add that in a google search for:

coldfusion extjs license

I find only one other discussion of your question, from 2011, but it did not come to any useful resolution:

https://www.sencha.com/forum/showthread.php?141612-Question-about-Coldfusion-9-and-Ext-JS-license

I do see also that in two blog posts of Rays, someone (not Adobe) asserted that one could use Ext as long as it's "with ColdFusion". Of course, that's not enough to defend the allegation you have, plus the first is from CF8 and 2007:

https://www.raymondcamden.com/2007/11/17/Ask-a-Jedi-ColdFusion-8-and-Ext/#comment-1713674460

and the second is from cf9 and 2009:

https://www.raymondcamden.com/2009/10/15/Warning-to-Ajax-uses-in-ColdFusion-9/#comment-1713718935

And no, I see nothing from Adobe indicating either way, and honestly I'd never heard the question asked before myself.

As I said in my reply to your comment there, this is the better place to ask. Perhaps someone from Adobe (or another user with specific knowledge of this) will chime in. In the meantime, you may want to clarify here: are you in fact calling the library directly? or just using it by way of CF tags/functions that themselves generate it as a part of CF's ajax features?

[Sportsmans]

To clarify I am simply using the tags and functions themselves. I am not calling the ExtJS 4.1 library directly.

I would agree it does appear to be a kind of bounty hunter approach. But I thought it would be best to put this out there for any others that may run into this issue.

My attempts to contact Adobe on this matter were futile.  During my 2 call attempts I was transferred several times only to finally be placed into some unresponsive infinite hold.  Very disappointing.

Thanks for the speedy response Charlie!

[Priyank Shrivastava.]

Hi,

I apologize for the inconvenience caused. I am from the Adobe ColdFusion team, let me check this at our end and get back to you.

Thanks,

Priyank Shrivastava

[Dave Watts · Accepted solution]

If you are simply using built-in CF functionality, you are not liable for the inclusion of ExtJS into the Adobe product. Your CF license covers third-party libraries that are explicitly used by CF. I suspect that the Sencha attorney is simply using a crawler to find out what sites have ExtJS libraries, and he isn't differentiating between one site or another.

I am not a lawyer, and therefore I am not your lawyer. But just because you're not a lawyer doesn't mean you can't provide a response. I would recommend that you send him a brief reply, along the lines of this. Of course, replace "Company X" with the appropriate name. Chances are, you won't get any response at all, but that's ok.

"Company X is a licensed user of Adobe ColdFusion, and Adobe has licensed ExtJS along with other third-party libraries for use with ColdFusion.  Here is a link to the Adobe ColdFusion license agreement for your reference:https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/legal/licenses-terms/pdf/ColdFusion-2016.pdf

https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/legal/licenses-terms/pdf/ColdFusion-2016.pdf

Please acknowledge your receipt of this email, along with your statement of understanding that Company X is within its rights to use ExtJS as a licensed third-party library as described in the linked ColdFusion license agreement."

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software