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Do you really think Nxt will be unable to find another quality program lead?

yes.

If you guys (devs) sell private licences, it is only you selling your IP rights, it is not going to hurt NXT. Do it if you can !

Will you be less interested in NXT ? Why would you ?

Your position in the NXT community would be your "unique selling proposition" that would be responsible of the business you generate! You wouldn't want to lose that!

So it won't hurt at all, like it won't hurt at all that you sell your knowledge/expertise in any other way. The only thing it changes is that it may, at first, reduces the time you devote exclusively to NXT. So speed of pure NXT development could be reduced. But considering what has been done without proper funding, I can not believe that all the side effects of being involved in related activities can not compensate. At worth other devs would pop up. Anyway, quantity of pure NXT development is not a guarantee that the stakes are gaining more value.

So Do it! Be free ! Sell you IP & talent. That's the beauty of what has been done here from the start. Let's not over engineer. No master !

JL is wise to stay anonymous until he represents some single point of failure and/or if he believe there is any risk of not doing so. Let's not underestimate the financial threat that NXT represents to the crypto mining industry. It is a blasphemy. But I'd hope that humanity has enough ressources for great ideas not to die if one of the best element stops to contribute. Satochi & BCNext disappeared and what they created remained.. still it may be luck, lets not underestimate the ressource out-there.

I'm not afraid of JL because he is clever.
But it seems he is human too, he may even be a she  So lets remain diplomate in every circonstances.

Thanks for your reactions guys, I have to let it sink in a bit.

I appreciate you took the time to give your opinion where you think I'm wrong.

Thanks for your nice reaction. Please do not underestimate the work Jean Luc is doing for Nxt. Even in a decentralized nature, there happen hick-ups in the network, hardcoded nodes, the code itself, bugs and a lot of stuff needs to be maintained. We can be lucky to have someone here with experience in this work, there are not many people around. And then doing it mostly for free just to take care of the network (well, I am sure Jean Luc has some NXT he can sell but never took a wage).

I am sure Jean-Luc would not offend if he got more help from more developers that can work on some tasks, so he can concentrate more on the things he likes most (if it's coding or network analysis). I would say instead of going against Jean-Luc, let us improve on the things we have and not think about getting rid of old structures, rather improve on them and hire (or attract) more developers.

How does Jean-Luc working on 2.0 prevent working on the other problems? The ones that I have seen mentioned, such as new clients, can be made by anyone.

Is the lack of alternative UIs the problem? We can have a competition for new clients with a prize for winner, or we can pay somebody to implement new clients. Somebody from the community can step up and start implementing. Useful would be discussion about what the clients should look like and do.

Hell, you tell me what you want to see, acquire funding to do it and I'll step up to the plate and bring in some other folks to work on it too!

3 things are of concern to me here.

#1 Jean Luc leaving if the community took a no vote on 2.0.
Personally I don't see where he has ever made that threat.  He HAS said that without an ICO then there won't be funds to continue development and NXT could be in the same situation as bitcoin where a company comes in like blockstream who's business model does not reflect the better interests of the coin holders.
This is an absolutely legitimate concern.

I agree we need a 2.0 but it needs to have a longterm plan in place with clear goals, it needs to not break existing shit, it needs to not dilute existing stakeholder value and I don't think we need an ICO or a coin split to do it.  There are alternatives.  Alternatives which would compensate devs for the work they do while allowing the community to accept or reject changes to core.

#2 Relicensing the software.
I write code for a living, this impacts me.  If you don't write code for a living this has no impact on you. 
Before anyone gets their panties in a knot over this, let me explain what GPL is.
I've been releasing my code under the GPL since Junior High.
The GPL is licensing, not copyright.  Licensing and copyright are two completely separate ballgames.
Copyright belongs defacto to the person who wrote it or the person or company who paid to have it wrote.

The GPL is a specific license that allows you to not only see the source code of the application you're running, but also copy it, modify it, change it, even repackage and sell it as your own.  As long as you acknowledge that the original source is under the GPL and all changes you make to the code are GPL licensed code and that those changes are published. 

This makes it viral and prevents company A from claiming person B's work as their own while still allowing company A to use it without asking for specific consent.

The MIT license is similar in most regards, but the move to GPL from MIT made it harder to sell private copies because the MIT license is not viral, changes do not have to be published.

Here is the truth.  If I want to fork NXT, swap out the default UI with my very own custom souped up UI and sell it, I can still absolutely do that.
I can even call it Devlux NXT!  Although personally I like Evolution NXT
I know it sounds astonishing, but it's the truth.
RedHat made $2 Billion USD last year doing exactly that.
Whats loads of fun, is that this also allows anyone to take RedHat's changes, strip the branding off and sell it or give it away as their own product. 
Behold CentOS.
Zend does it with PHP and I think you'll find that it's the norm, not the exception.

However, if I want to do that without releasing my changes, then I have to pay the developers a licensing fee.
This is par for the course and a valuable revenue stream in nearly all open source projects of note.
This is exactly  how "community" vs "enterprise" versions come to be.  There is nothing wrong with it guys.  Any developer who wants to  can make their own choice whether or not this is something they want.  But frankly, I don't know any developer who would care or even think twice.  In fact any developer in their right mind would support this.  If they become key to development even if they aren't compensated by the company directly, there is a very good chance that lucrative consulting gigs will follow.  That's how I got my start as a professional freelance developer, eventually working my way to Systems Architect for shit you've never heard of, but does really important stuff like ensuring you don't buy spoiled milk or orange juice.

The danger of course is when the enterprise version becomes the only version and the community is effectively locked out of getting upgrades unless they pay a license fee.  This is what I think Marc is objecting to.  If it's not, then it is what he should be objecting to.  That hasn't happened yet though and it doesn't have to happen.  If it did happen it could happen tomorrow or 10 years from tomorrow, the stakeholders would not have the final say.  This also is what I believe Marc is really objecting to.  So the answer here is to extract an enforcable agreement that no matter what, the community will define what is and is not the NXT coin.  No breaking changes go into enterprise that would force everyone to upgrade and pay a license fee.

#3  You all have meetups?  Without me?
Seriously guys, where and when is this going on?  Any chance of coming to Cancun for it? 
 

  I have a proposal to move NXT to self hosting model where the main repo is hosted in the blockchain or data cloud and the community votes on pull requests into it.

White paper coming soon, just need to do some more revisions.

That sound interesting!

Marc, we have to deal with the fact that the crypto world is converting from the biggest speculation event probably ever (Bitcoin) up to Mt. Gox to less speculative world, as the blockchain is no more only the currency but the technology around it.
Play with Google trends a bit: https://www.google.com/trends/
Look at ethereum, besides the amazing hype, it's what, 5/10 times its initial price? Volumes have gone down now and price will also go down as I doubt that the business model there is to make money out of the value of the coin itself.
And as that happens, the vision of JL and the other core devs for nxt, as far as I understood, is to build a financial toolkit so that someone that wants to use the toolkit for making a business and profit with it can do that for free (almost) by building their own child chain.
I can understand your frustration to see the value of NXT in terms of value of the coin, but that JL&co vision is very exciting and can be revolutionary as it could grow (theoretically) forever!
And who know... Probably also the nxt coin will gain in value as a consequence of the successful implementation of that idea.
I think we should all be kissing the a** of JL, Riker & co...
My morning thoughts...

If someone wants to see the 1.8 source, they have to ask permission

The source is actually included in the 1.8.0e zip file.
Although that is usually not the case, so I'm not sure if this was a change in policy or a mistake.

If someone wants to see the 1.8 source, they have to ask permission, but is it that hard to get permission?

Not at all, if you implement one or two features using the previous version of the source on bitbucket and we see that you are reliable contributor we'll give you permission.

And if someone outside the core devs does base a new feature on old published source, how much more effort is it to merge it back onto the latest private source?

In most cases it's not difficult.

I suspect these issues are academic in practice.

That's also my view.