ecmwf / ecflow

ECMWF's workflow manager
Apache License 2.0
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[question] Is there any need for a README note about Qt License Agreement (version 4.4.1+) for ecFlow UI? #28

Open kinow opened 1 year ago

kinow commented 1 year ago

Hi,

I was reading my news feed this morning when I saw this article “Using Qt 6 under LGPLv3” - https://embeddeduse.com/2023/01/06/using-qt-5-15-and-qt-6-under-lgplv3/

It is written by a consultant that provides services to corporations that include Qt licensing. In this article the author details the differences in the updated Qt license (February 2022), regarding GPL, LGPL, and other commercial Qt licenses.

The part that called my attention in the article was this note:

An application using Qt Commercial must not communicate with any another application using Qt LGPL-3.0 or Qt GPL, if both applications run on the same device. This is more restrictive than GPL.

I had a look at the Qt legal terms and conditions to confirm it. I took these screenshots from the parts I think are related to the author's note.

Screenshot from 2023-01-08 12-12-28

Screenshot from 2023-01-08 12-16-04

Screenshot from 2023-01-08 12-16-35

IANAL, but I think that would imply that if a site using ecflow_ui with Qt must not combine it with any other application built with Qt commercial, under the penalty of having to pay licensing fees to Qt company otherwise. If that's correct, I think it probably deserves a note somewhere in the README file.

Or if that's not the case, either a note anyway in the README file to say why it is OK to combine the licenses, or just close this issue and point it to other users with a similar question :+1:

Thank you!