PyQT Licensing and plugins/scripting

[Jarek Zgoda]

Fabio wrote:

> I'm about to write an application, and I'd like to use PyQt, but before
> choosing this toolkit I would like to clarify some particular licensing
> issues; if some user has already touched these, I would like to hear from
> his experiences.
> 
> This app should be cross-platform, so, given qt licensing policies, I would
> buy a commercial PyQt license and a commercial Qt license.
> 
> Could I license the application under the GPL for Gnu/Linux and under a
> commercial license for Windows and Mac OS X? If this is possible, I guess
> that contributions to the GPLed version could not be incorporated in the
> commercial version, but this would not be a big problem.

Right.

> The main issue with licensing is that I would like to give users of the
> application a scripting framework (for macros and the like), and eventually
> a plugin framework; PyQT redistribution policy states that if an user can
> get in touch with PyQT directly it should have a commercial license itself;
> how does this apply to those who want to develop commercial PyQT
> applications with a plugin/scripting framework?

This is vague, what one considers "get in touch"? If you perform any 
calculations and display results to the user, would it be "get in touch 
with PyQt"? I think not. If showing a window depends on your user's 
scripting code, then I thing it's "get in touch", but if you simply show 
a window with display widget (more or less advanced, be it QTextView or 
even sort of grid) with results, this doesn't cover the case, as PyQt is 
only used for display purposes -- just as with any other use of PyQt.

-- 
Jarek Zgoda
http://jpa.berlios.de/ | http://www.zgodowie.org/