licence for a free scientific application

[ars]

Hello,

When you say distribute, you mean that I should copy 2 seperate txt files, QtLicence.txt and QwtLicence.txt in the application folder?

Basically Yes. I' ve done it in the following way:

• I add a Licenses.zip file containing the license information for all open source projects I use in my project. This zip file contains several folders (one folder for each open source project) and the folders contain copies of the license files for the specific project. So one folder for Qt, another one for qwt, ... .
• Help/About dialog lists all open source projects used together with the license type and copyright information, something like "Qt 5.5.0, Copyright © 2015 The Qt Company Ltd., GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1" and so on. For details on the licenses I point the user to the Licenses.zip in the installation folder of my application.
• The user manual of my application repeats the listing of open source projects used (same as in Help/About) in the Copyrights section and points to Licenses.zip and a separate chapter of the user manual containing the license information. The latter is basically copying the license files into the user manual.
• When using GPL/LGPL projects don't forget to mention that you provide the source code of these GPL/LGPL projects upon request. You do not need to provide the code you have written yourself.

This procedure is required by our company lawyer when using open source projects in our company projects. It is motivated by the following section of LGPL 2.1:

You must give prominent notice with each copy of the work that the
Library is used in it and that the Library and its use are covered by
this License. You must supply a copy of this License. If the work
during execution displays copyright notices, you must include the
copyright notice for the Library among them, as well as a reference
directing the user to the copy of this License. Also, you must do one
of these things:...

Best regards
ars

[d_stranz]

Yes, this is excellent advice. Except for zipping the license files, I do the same in my commercial app - Help/About dialog, user manual, and license files installed to the program directory. I also supply links to the home pages of whatever open source libraries I use in my app. And unless the third-party license permits static linking, all open source libraries are delivered as DLLs.