Licensing question

[mrydeen]

Hey David,

First off, thank you for maintaining JFreeChart. We have used it for a while now mainly for performance graphing visualization in our test code using the Time Series Charts. I had a quick question about the licensing on all of the code. Normally when developing with a thirdparty library, the thirdparty will provide code to show how to initialize, setup and work with their code. This is the easiest way to get up and running with examples and such. In most cases, developers will copy and paste those snippets/examples into their code because there is only so many ways you can initialize/setup the thirdparty library. Currently all of the JFreeChart code, including the demos are placed under a GPL license. This means that non of the code can be reused/modified, including the demos or any snippets within the demo code.

In larger companies that use legal tools like Blackduck or Whitesource, they monitor the software that is within an application to make sure that developers have not stolen any code. I know that when JFreeChart was first created, the usage of such legal tools were not in use (I am dating myself here) or very minimally. Due to the GPL license on the demo code, it requires developers to go out of their way to make their not look even remotely like the demos. So I was trying to understand if that was the intent of the GPL on the examples/demos? Is it that you really do not want people to use any of the code out of the examples, or just a use case that is not covered?

Thank you for any response,
Michael

[david.gilbert]

For the demo code included in the JFreeChart distribution (there are just a few files) it is my intention that people should be able to reuse that code fairly freely. For that reason, the source file headers now show a BSD style license for the demo program - for example:

https://github.com/jfree/jfreechart/blo ... Demo1.java

For the demo code that I distribute with the JFreeChart Developer Guide (there are close to 200 demo files) I have put only a copyright notice in the source headers, there is no license to redistribute. Of course, it is my intention that people should be able to use snippets from the demos in their own programs without problems. I have a feeling that would be considered "fair use" under copyright law, but I don't know for sure. I could try to have a specific license drawn up for these demo programs to cover this case, but I'm not sure it would be easy to do and lawyers are expensive. But I'm not going to give anyone trouble for copying some lines of code from one of my demo programs into their own application.

[mrydeen]

Thank you David. That helps us with at least clearing that up, much appreciated.

Cheers,
Michael

[ktpinegar]

David, We do a detailed assessment of every software product we use for internal product development. In the JChart 1.0.17 product (at least) I found licensing text in the file "web-app_2_3.dtd" from Sun Microsystems that indicates the file, or parts thereof, cannot be used without written permission of Sun Microsystems. Can you confirm that permission from Sun has been obtained to include this file in the JChart product?

[John Matthews]

I can't find the file in the current version, 1.0.19. Is this the file: http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd?

[ktpinegar]

Thank you for answering. The file is in version jfreechart 1.0.17. It is not the same as the Oracle file you indicated. The licensing text I am seeing is:

Copyright 2000-2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc. 901 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303, U.S.A. All rights reserved.

This product or document is protected by copyright and distributed under licenses restricting its use, copying, distribution, and decompilation. No part of this product or documentation may be reproduced in any form by any means without prior written authorization of Sun and its licensors, if any.

Third party software, including font technology, is copyrighted and licensed from Sun suppliers.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, Solaris, Java, Java Server Pages, Java Naming and Directory Interface, JDBC, JDK, Java Mail and Enterprise JavaBeans, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc in the U.S. and other countries.

All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc.
Federal Acquisitions: Commercial Software - Government Users Subject to Standard License Terms and Conditions.

DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED CONDITIONS, REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE DISCLAIMED, EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT THAT SUCH DISCLAIMERS ARE HELD TO BE LEGALLY INVALID

[david.gilbert]

Hello,

I think you are mistaken. I don't recognise the file you mention, but in any case I downloaded the JFreeChart 1.0.17 release. The output from:

Code: Select all

jfreechart-1.0.17 dgilbert$ find . -name "*.dtd"
jfreechart-1.0.17 dgilbert$ 

...tells me there is no such file in the distribution.

[ktpinegar]

I downloaded the version on sourceforge and found the file in the servlet.jar file.

[david.gilbert]

The servlet.jar file is in the distribution for sure, although it won't be in future releases. It is mentioned in the README.txt file:

Code: Select all

(c)  servlet.jar - classes in the org.jfree.chart.servlet
package require this file.  The JFreeChart distribution includes the
servlet.jar file distributed with Tomcat 4.1.31.  Applicable license
terms are published at:

    http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/LICENSE

[ktpinegar]

Thank you very much.