[Qgis-developer] Plugin licence

[Vincent Picavet (ml)]

Hi,

On 25/05/2016 14:07, Tom Chadwin wrote:
> Vincent Picavet (ml) wrote
>> A grey area would be for example if you were using a QWebEngine
>> component in your Python Plugin, directly calling javascript functions
>> of the Javascript library from your Python code.
>> In that case I really do not know if it would be considered a link in
>> the GPL sense.
>>
>> But for your use case with code generation it is really clear.
> 
> A QWebView is used in the GUI as a preview window, and loads in the
> libraries. So it directly uses them, in that the generated output JS is
> loaded by Python into the QWebView. That sounds potentially like a "link" to
> me (apologies for not thinking of that before - I didn't appreciate its
> relevance).

I would say that while you just load the HTML in a QWebView, this is not
a link : the embedded web client loads the HTML file and interprets it,
independently of your code. I'd say you are still safe here, and I would
still consider the generated pages as data for from your plugin point of
view.

If you would call a javascript function from Python through a direct
code binding I would say it may be considered a link. But this is my own
personal interpretation. This is where we enter a grey zone, and I do
not have any online resource to point to in this case.
If you want to know more on this, I know some IP lawyers specialized in
OpenSource who may help.

For me your use case is still safe and non-binding. Furthermore, it is
pretty common with all softwares loading HTML documentation from within
an embedded browser, and I have never seen any licence trouble arising
with this.

Vincent