Highcharts usage in Jenkins Plugin - Licence

[Michael Prankl]

Hi,

I'm currently working on a plugin, in which I would like to use Highcharts as a charting engine (attached a screenshot).
The Highcharts FAQ states that Highcharts can be used under the Creative commons licence "Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0)" and if you are a "non-profit organization".

So my questions are:
Is Jenkins-CI a "non-profit organization"?
Am I good to go and use Highcharts under the creative commons licence?
Are there already Jenkins plugins which use Highcharts?

Thanks
Michael
 

[Baptiste Mathus]

Hi,

I never heard of one using it, though using https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Grepping+all+sources it should be pretty easy to check.

IMO, your best bet it to ask them, by email of twitter for example. Just make sure to tell it's for the OSS project, not for one of the companies doing business around it.

Cheers

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[Richard Bywater]

IANAL but it doesn't really matter if Jenkins-CI is a non-profit organisation or not - its more whether the "end-user" (that is the organisation that is running the Jenkins server using your plugin) is a non-profit organisation or not. 

Given Jenkins target market, I would imagine that 99% of the time, the target Jenkins instance will be commercial in nature and therefore Highcharts wouldn't be usable.

Richard.

[Michael Prankl]

Am Montag, 23. November 2015 21:05:35 UTC+1 schrieb Richard Bywater:

IANAL but it doesn't really matter if Jenkins-CI is a non-profit organisation or not - its more whether the "end-user" (that is the organisation that is running the Jenkins server using your plugin) is a non-profit organisation or not. 

Given Jenkins target market, I would imagine that 99% of the time, the target Jenkins instance will be commercial in nature and therefore Highcharts wouldn't be usable.

That's a good point, thanks.

I contacted Highcharts support with my questions again, let's see what they think of it.

[Tom Fennelly]

Hi Michael.

Off topic from your email subject, but I'd be interested in talking to you about how you're implementing this plugin and how you're using the JS libs. I know you've already contributed to jenkins-js-libs, but curious to get your thoughts etc. Maybe I can ping you directly and we can arrange to have a chat?

Regards,

Tom.

[Michael Prankl]

Got a reply from Highcharts:

Hi Michael, 

Thanks for your reply. 

Good news! You can use Highcharts under the Non Commercial License. However, you will need to inform your users that if they wish to use Highcharts commercially, they will need to purchase a license. Additionally, you must also include a link to our web shop. 

I hope you found this clarifying. 
Please don't hesitate to contact me, should you have any further questions. 

Have a nice day!

Is including this some kind of "no-go" for Jenkins plugins? Because right now I would go forward with Highcharts and include some kind of footer with this license information.

Cheers
Michael

[Daniel Beck]

On 24.11.2015, at 14:14, Michael Prankl <eidott...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Is including this some kind of "no-go" for Jenkins plugins? Because right now I would go forward with Highcharts and include some kind of footer with this license information.

I would not consider it a 'no-go', you just need to be clear on what license(s) the entire plugin falls under.

Users who care about it should be able to see it in your plugin's documentation (GitHub readme, Jenkins wiki page), and it should be part of the plugin's metadata:

https://YOUR-JENKINS/pluginManager/plugin/YOUR-PLUGIN-ID/thirdPartyLicenses

[Richard Bywater]

As Daniel says, its not necessarily a no-go but I do wonder how many non-commercial installs Jenkins actually has so not sure what kind of uptake your plugin will have. 

In terms of visibility, I wonder if any thought has been given of publishing the type of licence in the Plugin Info box on the wiki? Seems like a reasonable place to call out licence information (especially if a "non-standard" one)

Richard.

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[Gavin]

I've always been curious, does "Non Commercial License" mean its okay if you are not selling the service?

Like cloudbees wouldn't be allowed to use it, but someone hosting things internally for their own use would be fine?

[Richard Bywater]

It's defined as "A commercial use is one primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation.".

So presuming that you are using it to help do stuff for you to provide a commercial product or service then I'd say it would be counted as commercial use. (Getting better quality software for example leads to happier customers which leads to commercial advantage etc. )

Richard

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[Vojtech Juranek]

On Tuesday 24 November 2015 20:20:11 Richard Bywater wrote:
> In terms of visibility, I wonder if any thought has been given of
> publishing the type of licence in the Plugin Info box on the wiki?

+1, it definitely doesn't hurt, but I would one step further and provide this
information also in update center. Probably split it into two parts, free
plugins and non-free plugins (similar to e.g. rpmfusion.org, where packages
with "no commercial use"-like restrictions are in non-free repository), to
make it very visible to users, that if they want to use any of non-free
plugins, they should check licenses really carefully.

In the past I was about to use Highcharts in on of my plugins, but finally
decided not to use it, as I was afraid it could result into massive
(unintentional) violation of the license by end users.

Vojta

[Nigel Magnay]

 

(unintentional) violation of the license by end users.

​Oh, it will be.

You're asking an awful lot of end-users to be going through plugin detail (the vast majority are entirely unencumbered by transitive licensing issues) to determine if they're 'allowed to use it' or not. They're just not going to bother. If I were Highcharts, and the license really​ is down to the 'commercial-ness' of the end user rather than the ISV producing the component (which is more normal), I would not be happy and I might choose to pursue you for not enforcing this license term.

​IMO, plugins that have terms like that should not belong in the public repository at all.​

 

[Ullrich Hafner]

Wouldn’t it make sense to ask what a commercial license would cost for the Jenkins project so that users of Jenkins don’t need to bother about the license at all? 

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[Nigel Magnay]

The concern isn't the "Jenkins Project" - that's non-profit and can use it at will. It's the end users. Their FAQ claims:

NON-COMMERCIAL REDISTRIBUTION.

You are allowed to distribute a Highsoft software product with non-commercial packages given that you fulfill two conditions:

• Emphasize to your users that a Highsoft software product is not free for commercial use. You can do this on your download page or when your users activate a Highsoft software product in your application.
• Provide a link back to this web page in the same location.

Whether you can use a (CC BY-NC 3.0) in your commercial organisation is entirely determined on whether you are gaining "commercial advantage" by doing so. I would argue that for most plugins and companies this is not the case. But assuredly that would be a matter for lawyers.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jenkinsci-dev/A6CAE22E-5C55-41BA-B38F-8641CEA8BF4C%40gmail.com.

[Tom Fennelly]

On 25 November 2015 at 10:10, Ullrich Hafner <ullrich...@gmail.com> wrote:

Wouldn’t it make sense to ask what a commercial license would cost for the Jenkins project so that users of Jenkins don’t need to bother about the license at all? 

The Jenkins project buying a license (which it wouldn't need to anyway) to use it would only entitle that org to use it. It would not cover commercial entities that use Jenkins (and install this plugin).

IMO, using Highcharts is a bad idea because:

1. It will limit the adoption of this plugin, which is a real pity imo as it looks to be really useful to a lot of people. Many commercial entities will not want the bother of managing yet another license.
   
2. In order to be fair to end users, I think the plugin needs to do something that would force users to acknowledge that they are using software for which they require a license e.g. a first time popup that the need to "Accept" before using. That's kind suckie imo.

Is there a reason why something like Google Charts could not be used here (or some other OSS lib)? Is Highcharts really so much better?

[Ullrich Hafner]

Am 25.11.2015 um 11:27 schrieb Nigel Magnay <nigel....@gmail.com>:

The concern isn't the "Jenkins Project" - that's non-profit and can use it at will. It's the end users. Their FAQ claims:

NON-COMMERCIAL REDISTRIBUTION.

You are allowed to distribute a Highsoft software product with non-commercial packages given that you fulfill two conditions:

• Emphasize to your users that a Highsoft software product is not free for commercial use. You can do this on your download page or when your users activate a Highsoft software product in your application.
• Provide a link back to this web page in the same location.

That not what I asked. I would like to know how much a OEM license would cost for a community project like Jenkins. With a OEM license you *can* use the plug-ins without additional cost.  

It would not hurt us to ask. 

Whether you can use a (CC BY-NC 3.0) in your commercial organisation is entirely determined on whether you are gaining "commercial advantage" by doing so. I would argue that for most plugins and companies this is not the case. But assuredly that would be a matter for lawyers.

On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 10:10 AM, Ullrich Hafner <ullrich...@gmail.com> wrote:

Wouldn’t it make sense to ask what a commercial license would cost for the Jenkins project so that users of Jenkins don’t need to bother about the license at all? 

Am 25.11.2015 um 10:59 schrieb Nigel Magnay <nigel....@gmail.com>:

 

(unintentional) violation of the license by end users.

​Oh, it will be.

You're asking an awful lot of end-users to be going through plugin detail (the vast majority are entirely unencumbered by transitive licensing issues) to determine if they're 'allowed to use it' or not. They're just not going to bother. If I were Highcharts, and the license really​ is down to the 'commercial-ness' of the end user rather than the ISV producing the component (which is more normal), I would not be happy and I might choose to pursue you for not enforcing this license term.

​IMO, plugins that have terms like that should not belong in the public repository at all.​

 

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[Nigel Magnay]

I don't follow how an OEM license would work with an open-source project. 

What if I fork the plugin - license still valid? 

What if I make changes in that (forked) plugin - license still valid? Even if the fork isn't public?

What if those changes are entirely to serve my own proprietary / commercial interests? What about if they're entirely to serve a 3rd party commercial interests?

The whole thing ends up being a tarpit. An OEM license still ends up being a 'non-free' license (it'll impose restrictions covering the above usecases and more). 

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[Michael Prankl]

The current implementation is'nt heavily based on Highcharts, so switching to another JavaScript Charting Library wouldn't cause much pain and seems to be the best option right now.
I choose Highcharts in the first place because I've had already experience in using it. But now I will look into some other Charting libraries.

Anyway, thank you all for your input in this "licensing matter" ;)

@ Tom Fennelly:

I already took a closer a look at Google Charts. One thing that I didn't like is that you're not allowed to host the Google Chart Library on your own server. So the plugin users must always have a working internet connection (maybe in some company intranets that may not be the case).

Cheers
Michael

[Tom Fennelly]

On 25 November 2015 at 19:28, Michael Prankl <eidott...@gmail.com> wrote:

@ Tom Fennelly:

I already took a closer a look at Google Charts. One thing that I didn't like is that you're not allowed to host the Google Chart Library on your own server. So the plugin users must always have a working internet connection (maybe in some company intranets that may not be the case).

Ah that sucks.

I had a quick look at this: http://socialcompare.com/en/comparison/javascript-graphs-and-charts-libraries ... hard to believe there are so many of them.