JpGraph and "open source use"

[Randy Barlow]

Hello!

It's me again with another question about a weird license wording on a
library.


tl;dr;

JpGraph's download page[0] says:

"JpGraph is released under a dual license. QPL 1.0 (Qt Free License) For
non-commercial, open-source or educational use and JpGraph Professional
License for commercial use."

I don't know what "open-source use" means, but does that wording make
this licensing unacceptable for Fedora?


Longer story

You may recall a thread I started earlier this year[1] about c-pchart
and the strange license that led to a contradiction. I've filed an issue
with Ampache[2] (a project that uses c-pchart) and they are willing to
switch to a different graphing library to help resolve this legal issue.
They are considering JpGraph as a replacement, and had asked if it would
be acceptable to Fedora.

I am not sure since it has the "non-commercial" and "commercial"
language in there. Does the "or" in the QPL satisfy our legal
requirements (since "open-source" was included in a list with "or"),
or
does the language about "commercial use" supercede that? It does seem
pretty ambiguous to me.


[0] http://jpgraph.net/download/
[1]
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail].o...
[2] https://github.com/ampache/ampache/issues/1515

[Tom Callaway]

On 11/26/2017 11:13 PM, Randy Barlow wrote:
>  Hello!
>  
>  It's me again with another question about a weird license wording on a
>  library.
>  
>  
>  tl;dr;
>  
>  JpGraph's download page[0] says:
>  
>  "JpGraph is released under a dual license. QPL 1.0 (Qt Free License) For
>  non-commercial, open-source or educational use and JpGraph Professional
>  License for commercial use."
>  
>  I don't know what "open-source use" means, but does that wording make
>  this licensing unacceptable for Fedora? 
Yes. While the Q Public License itself does not contain any restrictions
on commercial use, his wording on the download page makes it clear that
commercial use under the QPL is not permitted.

Even clearer is the page discussing the JpGraph Professional Version [1]:

  If you plan on using JpGraph in a commercial context you will need to
  acquire the professional license. Commercial use is for example if you
  use JpGraph on a site to provide a service for paying customers or for
  example if you are using JpGraph in an intranet to provide support for
  internal business processes, i.e. in benefit for a commercial company.

  In short, if you use JpGraph where you have an economic advantage
  (either through paying customers or improving internal business
  processes) this most likely falls under commercial use.

This restriction on commercial use means that the license is not really
QPL, but rather, a custom license that says "You may use this under the
terms of the QPL, as long as you are not using it in a commercial
context." That license is non-free and non-open source.

Sorry. :/

~tom

1: http://jpgraph.net/pro/

[Randy Barlow]

On 11/27/2017 10:22 AM, Tom Callaway wrote:
>  This restriction on commercial use means that the license is not
> really
>  QPL, but rather, a custom license that says "You may use this under the
>  terms of the QPL, as long as you are not using it in a commercial
>  context." That license is non-free and non-open source.
>  
>  Sorry. :/ 
It's alright, thanks for the analysis!