Fancybox 2 new license [closed]

Question

The new license for Fancybox 2 states we cant use this plugin for commercial purposes. I'm a web developer and always promoted this plugin to my costumers. Does this mean I need to find or write a new plugin with a more free license?

Maybe I just don't understand the noncommercial word correct, if so pleas correct me. But what I can find around the internet it's states I cant use a software with this license on a webpage where the business is making money.

Answer 1

Your interpretation of the license is correct (although the usual I'm-not-a-lawyer disclaimer applies). The Creative Commons Non-Commercial licenses are meant to give people free access to a creative work, as long as they don't intend on making money from it.

If - as a webdeveloper - you sell sites to your clients, you're therefor not allowed to use the Fancybox2 plugin using the CC-NC license. Your options are basically:

1. Choose to obtain a commercial license from the author of Fancybox 2. He offers two alternative licenses: a single-website license for $19.00, or a multi-website license (which you as a webdeveloper can use for all your clients) for $89.00.
2. Choose to use the older Fancybox 1, which has been made available under a more "free" license, as you put it. Since that license allows redistribution under the same terms, these older versions will be around for quite some time.
3. Choose to find / write an alternative library offering the same functionality.

Addendum: A counter-question to those wondering about the legality of making this plugin commercially available: Could you motivate why you feel this way? The jQuery project is made available under both the MIT and GPL licenses; the MIT license (along with the BSD license) are among the most relaxing licenses in existence. The only demand it places on redistribution is that the copyright notice on the code remains intact, to honor the original author. It's perfectly permissible to ship jQuery as part of software under a different license - even Microsoft redistributes jQuery as part of Visual Studio.

Answer 2

Like you I was a user of the fancybox v1 plugin. Like you I was surprised to discover the v2 changed the licensing requiring me to purchase a license for commercial use. But, let me save you some time and make this suggestion: just purchase the multi site license.

I look at it this way, it's arguable that given the fact that jQuery is free, extending it with the v2 plugin and then charging money for it is legally questionable. Like the comments above, I'm not a lawyer, so I have no idea.

That said, look at the cost of the plugin, compared to how much it does for you. Bear in mind v2 is quite improved, it's faster, it fixes a number of bugs in v1, etc. Now I don't want to make any assumptions about you and your hourly rate, but personally, if I was to try and write that plugin myself, just because it's then 'for free', purchasing the plugin would probably pay for itself within the first few hours of me trying to write it myself.

Bottom line: get the multisite license and focus on solving your clients problems. We did and it took us all of about 10mins to buy, d/l and incorporate. Done!

Answer 3

I'm not a lawyer but I would consider what the author of FancyBox 2 does is legally questionable, which could mean that the licensing of the whole software invalid.

So I would not care whether or not something is commercial use, but just won't use that software, not even the paid version. It is somewhat likely that the project is doing a copyright infringement.

If you use that software - commercially or not - you would be an infringer, too.