id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	priority	milestone	component	version	resolution	keywords	cc	blockedby	blocking	notify_on_close	platform	project
3970	Can ChimeraX use GPL licensed QtCharts	tony.schaefer@…	Scooter Morris	"QtCharts is a module for making plots that is an alternative to matplotlib.  It is GPLv3 licensed as are several other Qt modules listed in the Qt docs

   https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtmodules.html#gpl-licensed-addons

Some other GPL only Qt modules might be of interest in ChimeraX: Qt Data Visualization (3D vis), Qt Quick 3D, Qt Quick WebGL.

Are plugins to ChimeraX able to use these and be distributed on the Toolshed?

Can these be used as part of the ChimeraX distribution?  ie can ChimeraX be GPL licensed?  We discussed this years ago and some sentiment suggested that would be unacceptable with licenses to pharmaceutical companies.  It was an explanation I never understood, and would be good to have it written down.



Begin forwarded message:

From: Anthony James Schaefer <>
Subject: Re: SEQROW and PySide2 in ChimeraX 1.2
Date: November 20, 2020 at 5:45:11 PM PST
To: Tom Goddard 
Cc: Eric Pettersen, Greg Couch, Scooter Morris

Tom,

I don't want to jinx it, but it looks like it will be a simple switch for SEQCROW. I usually just use the C++ Qt online documentation because it's pretty fleshed out, and guess what the PyQt5 equivalents should be. It took me a while to figure out why I couldn't import Signal from PyQt5.QtCore. I didn't even realize QAction.triggered callbacks could take an argument. I guess if I need that I could probably use a lambda function or some other trick. From what I've seen so far, PySide2 stays true to the C++ (and its own documentation looks adequate, which is nice). I can't think of any major issues I've had with PyQt5, so I'd be fine either way. 

The only thing I'd be interested in is the plots. I'm eager to get away from matplotlib. 

Would the PySide2 license allow ChimeraX to include QtCharts? 

If my bundle required another module that depends on PySide2, would it recognize ChimeraX's PySide2? If you go forward with PySide2, I might use PythonQwt (or something else - apparently PythonQwt has performance issues with PySide2) to do 2D contour plots in the future. A while back I tried to have my bundle install PyQtChart, and ChimeraX's PyQt5 wasn't recognized. 

Best,

Tony"	task	assigned	moderate		Third Party				Tom Goddard Eric Pettersen Greg Couch				all	ChimeraX