Telerik Kendo UI Core is the free and open-source (Apache 2.0) version of Kendo UI. It includes nearly 80 percent of the UI widgets formerly in Kendo UI Web (Autocomplete, DatePicker, Tooltip, etc.), all of the widgets and features formerly available under Kendo UI Mobile, and all of the core framework features of Kendo UI (DataSource, SPA, MVVM, etc).

Kendo UI Core can be used in open source and commercial projects which don’t require dedicated support or advanced widgets such as editor, chart, grid, scheduler and more. You can access its public github repository here.

From the beginning, we’ve published a version of Kendo UI Web via a GPLv3 license. Many of our developers are glad to have this option for using Kendo UI widgets, but because the GPL is an restrictive license (meaning it can only be used for non-commercial projects), its value to the overall developer community has been limited. In addition, the GPL license prevented us from being able to accept community contributions for Kendo UI Web from interested customers.

With this announcement, we intend to change all that. The Kendo UI Core framework will be released under the permissive Apache 2.0 license, which will allow developers to use the library in both commercial and non-commercial projects. What’s more, because we intend to host Kendo UI Core widgets in a publicly-accessible GitHub repository, we’ll be able to accept contributions to Kendo UI Core from our extensive developer community (NB: developers will need to sign a Contributor License Agreement that assigns copyright to Progress so that we can continue to distribute Kendo UI Core in our commercial SKUs).

The Kendo UI Core offering is our way of giving back to the front-end development community with a set of the best UI widgets and JavaScript framework features on the web today. Rather than taking the more restrictive approach adopted by many of our competitors, we’ve made the decision to go the permissive route. From this point forward, developers will have access to much of the world-class functionality of Kendo UI widgets, for free, for all of their projects.

Yes and yes! One of the goals of this announcement is to provide our community with the ability to participate in the evolution of Kendo UI widgets, and this includes direct contributions from community members. As long as you’re willing to complete our Contributor License Agreement, we’re more than happy to consider your contributions.

From the beginning, we’ve published a version of the Kendo UI Web framework via a GPLv3 license. Many of our developers are glad to have this option for using Kendo UI widgets, but because the GPL is an restrictive license (meaning it can only be used for non-commercial projects), its value to the overall developer community has been limited. In addition, the GPL license prevented us from being able to accept community contributions for Kendo UI Web widgets from interested customers.

By retiring the GPL version of the Kendo UI Web framework and replacing this library with the new Kendo UI Core distribution, we’re able to offer customers a license compatible with a broader variety of project types, while ensuring that they always have access to the latest and greatest from the Kendo UI team and the developer community.

Not all Kendo UI widgets are created equal. And some, like the Grid, Scheduler and Editor, consume a great deal of engineering effort to build and maintain. Widgets such as these are complex, but they are also essential for customers building certain types of apps, and the open-source equivalents for these leave a lot to be desired. To ensure that critical widgets like the Grid, Scheduler and Editor continue to get the proper attention and focus they deserve from our engineering team, we’ve decided to only offer these widgets with commercial Kendo UI licenses.

At the present, the Kendo UI Core product only covers the majority of our Web UI widgets and framework features, and this does not include the former Kendo UI DataViz product. Kendo UI DataViz tools are available either via a commercial SKU (Professional, UI for *) or with a Business-level subscription to the Telerik Platform.

With the introduction of the Kendo UI Core product, the Kendo UI Mobile product is no longer available as a standalone, paid product. Instead, all of the widgets and framework features available in the Kendo UI Mobile product can be found rolled into the Kendo UI Core free and open-source product.

Not at all. The UI widgets and framework features that make up the Kendo UI Core product are still essential to our plans for Kendo UI overall. Not only do we intend to continue shipping Kendo UI Core tools as a part of all of our other packages, we’ll continue to actively develop Kendo UI Core through fixes, features and new widgets for as long as we work on Kendo UI itself.

If you’re using Kendo UI Core widgets and find that you need some help, you have a couple of options. The first is StackOverflow, a great Q&A community for developers. Questions with the #kendoui tag are answered by members of our community and even our engineering team. As a second option, you have free read-only access to our Kendo UI Premium forums, where you can search for relevant information/solutions concerning your scenario.

If you need formal support for Kendo UI widgets, including guaranteed response times and assistance from Telerik Kendo UI engineers, you can purchase any commercial license we offer (Professional or UI for *) or purchase a Premium support package from telerik.com/kendo-ui.

Since the Kendo UI Core framework is server platform agnostic, you can use it on the client side regardless of the server framework backend. Still if you’re looking for tighter Kendo UI product integration with a server framework like ASP.NET MVC, PHP or Java JSP, our Telerik UI for MVC, PHP and JSP packages are right for you. These products include everything in the Kendo UI Core product by default, while also providing server-side helpers that make integrating Kendo UI widgets into your backend development workflow a snap.

Absolutely. Even though we work hard to make sure that Kendo UI widgets provide everything developers need to build sites and apps with HTML5 and JavaScript, we recognize that it might not always be the only thing you want. Libraries like AngularJS, Bootstrap and others are great, and we know many of our customers want to use these libraries with the Kendo UI framework. We’ve always worked to ensure that Kendo UI widgets “play nice with others.” Our permissive license for Kendo UI Core makes the library compatible with most permissive licenses around, and you’re free to use it with any compatible library you prefer.