'Tofu' license pits open source against meat

JavaScript development goes to the dogs

What you can - and cannot do - with your software is often determined by the code owner's license. From not using open source APIs with closed-source digital rights management (DRM) to being barred from fiddling with Windows source code, we've seen it all.

Or have we?

Joining the open source and commercial melee is a document that pretty much rules out using a new JavaScript tool by anyone working in - or associated with - the pharmaceutical, farming and food, and some manufacturing industries. Oh, and certain universities are out, too.

ExtTLD, for developing components on the open source Ext JS framework, has been released under a license apparently suited only to vegans, vegetarians and animal rights activists.

Among the terms, ExtTLD cannot be used in connection with the development and manufacture of products that involve animal testing, products whose ingredients might come from testing on animals or genetically modified organisms involving animal genes.

That means you can't be involved in testing and neither can your products or services.

"Animal product" in this case is defined as a whole cornucopia of items spanning meat, seafood, honey, fur, silk and eggs.

Also out is participation in animal-based sports, such as rodeo riding, and transport of animals - so there go the haulage sectors and, possibly, anybody developing sat-nav systems and applications.

ExtTLD has been devised by one Jaro Benc and is based on Java Enterprise Edition tag files. ExtTLD is a library for Java web developers that generates Ext JS JavaScript at the runtime based on a JSP tag library. ExtTLD is a separate offering to Ext JS.

If ExtTLD sounds like it's right up your dog pound then go here. To check out whether you qualify for this well-meaning but, possibly impossible-to-use, license go here.®