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localgovdrupal / localgov_elections

This module provides submodules, content types, views and configuration that allow the reporting of election results for the LocalGov Drupal distribution.
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Highcharts licence - can councils use this without a licence? #18

Open finnlewis opened 2 months ago

finnlewis commented 2 months ago

Just discussing this in Merge Tuesdays, and @Adnan-cds points out that Highcharts is not open source.

https://github.com/highcharts/highcharts?tab=readme-ov-file

So we want to check on this.

Also, can we swap out other open source charts libraries?

CC @markconroy

willguv commented 2 months ago

Followed up at https://github.com/localgovdrupal/localgov_elections/issues/17

dedavidson commented 2 months ago

@rgcarr what was the original rational for choosing Highcharts? I can't recall.

rgcarr commented 2 months ago

Probably historical. The Charts module only used to support only Google and Highcharts - not sure how much that has changed. When I adopted Highcharts you could purchase a single 'developers' perpetual license that covers pretty much unlimited use. Looks like that ship has sailed now for new users.

markconroy commented 2 months ago

I'm going to have a look at using chartjs for this now. Let's cross the fingers it works.

finnlewis commented 2 months ago

We've still not heard back from Highcharts on whether Local Gov orgs can be classed as a non-profit, and get free licence.

dedavidson commented 2 months ago

@willguv response from Highcharts

Thank you for contacting us, and for your interest in our software.

Free usage of Highcharts is limited to testing and demonstration purposes, and personal/educational use.

Commercial licenses are required for our government customers, but we offer discounted pricing to this sector.

Each council would have to have their own separate license, or we can assign a license to the project that can also cover deployments to the councils.

How and in what format are the election results shared? Will it still be possible to work on the Highcharts code after deployment?

Please elaborate on the use case and I can get an idea of the license scope and pricing.

Looking forward to hearing back.

WIll I respond copying you in to take forward?

willguv commented 2 months ago

Hi @dedavidson thanks for this, yes please copy me in

willguv commented 2 months ago

Begin forwarded message:

Subject: Re: Highcharts licensing - Rohallion Date: 26 June 2024 at 17:03:55 BST

Hi, thanks for getting back to us

We’re an open source project, Localgov Drupal, backed by a not for profit co-op in the UK. Our sole purpose is to maintain Localgov Drupal and grow its users. Any profits are reinvested in this

LocalGov Drupal is used by 45 councils in the UK, and Elections is an optional module. We expect most will start using it in the next year or so.

The Elections module produces a series of pages for each election, and Highcharts would be used to show a bar chart of results. In the launch version we’re using Chartjs, but the display is not as rich as can be achieved with Highcharts.

Councils could in theory work on this module after deployment, but it’s unlikely. Most of them do not have developers of their own, and they would simply install the module.

It’s also unlikely councils would want to pay for a Highcharts licence of their own for this single use. As such we’re interested in the annual licence cost for using the functionality in LocalGov Drupal.

Many thanks for your help!

All the best,

Will, Product Lead

willguv commented 2 months ago

Had a positive response from Highcharts that we can pick up in the next version