Important - Highcharts Licensing

[The Dalek Hunter]

Does this also affect WeeWX, PWS Dashboard and WeatherCat as I use them all???

[HansR]

Does this also affect WeeWX, PWS Dashboard and WeatherCat as I use them all???

If they use HighCharts the answer no doubt will be yes (I don't use those tools so I don't know exactly what they use precisely).

I would say Highcharts will have a hell of a job to track and trace all those users and enforce the licenses. Highcharts apparently is deeply penetrated into the amateur meteo world. They maybe better of creating a general free license with limited functionality. In a way that will be fun, I am not sure how big this will be played but if they start using license numbers etc... this wil become complex.

If you need a license per version and all tools use different versions it will easily get beyond the tracking capacity of Highcharts.
They may be chopping off their own limbs.

[saratogaWX]

I'm doing some experimentation with replacing Highcharts with open-source graphing products like ChartsJS, Grafana, PlotLY .. each has their own ecosystem with some using SVG and some using canvas. I'm looking to replace the graphs in the Saratoga template Cumulus plugin for CumulusMX.

So many packages with wildly varying syntax (none matching the Hightcharts syntax, of course).

[mcrossley]

I'd be interested to hear what you think of them once you've had a decent play around. Another option is one of the many wrappers for D3?

[saratogaWX]

Hi Mark,
I'll keep you posted on my explorations. PlotLY is a D3 wrapper

Been a while since I've explored the wild world of JavaScript packages. I do want something that can be loaded locally as a file, not have to depend on a CDN (or use NPM) so it's easy to setup and maintain locally. With so many recent injections of malware into CDN distributions of various packages, I like to use a fixed/local package and not rely on off-site resources.

[HansR]

I am also interested in your results. I have been looking at alternatives as well - no experiments, just theory and syntax - and i am very confused here.

[AndyKF650]

Well following my application for a non commercial licence, I received a message from HighCharts today saying that I did not qualify for this type of licence.

Back to the drawing board then.

[ConligWX]

Well following my application for a non commercial licence, I received a message from HighCharts today saying that I did not qualify for this type of licence.

Back to the drawing board then.

So what was their reason to telling you are are not a non-commercial website and not entitled to a free non-commercial license?

I think the application needs to reflect the FAQ.

Who's eligible for an Education License?
Students and employees with an active email address from any educational institution or organization who want to use our software in non-commercial projects are eligible to apply.

so you need to say your website IS a non-commercial project, your organisation is your domain name and the "weather" is the project. that would be my understanding of it.

I think for the future however, it would be best to move away from highcharts if they are being that anal about a license that they cant really impose to the masses. what a waste of time for everyone.

[HansR]

I think for the future however, it would be best to move away from highcharts if they are being that anal about a license that they cant really impose to the masses. what a waste of time for everyone.

I am beginning to think that too. Very unfortunate.

[The Dalek Hunter]

So in continuing to use CMX with Highcharts are we in breach of its licensing terms and hence breaking the law???

[broadstairs]

In my view if you use Highcharts on your public website then you are in breach of their Ts&Cs, however if you only use the dashboard on your PC at home then how are they going to find out. Running CMX itself I don't see they can do anything about. The thing is it is up to the company to prove you are in breach, this would be a civil case and no law is broken IMHO.

I do not use the CMX graphs on my public website as I have a bespoke site based on Ken True's scripts and currently do not have any graphs on it and will not until I can find a way to do them without Highcharts. I have some graph scripts in PHP which were for Weather Display so will convert them to use the CMX data and they use JPGraph which is free for personal use (no licence of any kind required). If only CMX provided the data like the clientraw text files from WD

Stuart

[freddie]

If only CMX provided the data like the clientraw text files from WD

Stuart

Can't you do this already with a file containing relevant web tags that CMX processes and uploads?

[saratogaWX]

I'm starting my experiments with other open-source JavaScript packages by first adapting Mark's existing Highcharts to the Saratoga template

Then I'll modify the scripts for each tested package. Here's what my adaptation of the existing Highcharts looks like:

2024-04-09_CUMX-Highcharts.jpg

2024-04-09_CUMX-Highcharts2.jpg

[broadstairs]

If only CMX provided the data like the clientraw text files from WD

Stuart

Can't you do this already with a file containing relevant web tags that CMX processes and uploads?

Very possibly early days only just about to start my investigation. Probably need more than one file as some data is only needed every 24 hours.

Stuart

[HansR]

I'm starting my experiments with other open-source JavaScript packages by first adapting Mark's existing Highcharts to the Saratoga template

Then I'll modify the scripts for each tested package. Here's what my adaptation of the existing Highcharts looks like:

2024-04-09_CUMX-Highcharts.jpg

2024-04-09_CUMX-Highcharts2.jpg

I am not a user of your template (sorry for that ) but could you post one script and one adaptation so that I can see what the impact is?
Currently I have really no idea what's under the bonnet