Question: Highcharts is supposed to be an open source chart project that is free for personal use and for non-profit organisations. For non-profit organisations and individuals it is licensed under the [Creative Commons (CC) Attribution-NonCommercial licence](http://Creative%20Commons%20(CC)%20Attribution-NonCommercial%20licence)

Now I'm in a situation that I am a software developer, developing software for an eligible organisation (non-profit, non-government since highcharts does not consider government organisations to be covered). Now as I understand it, this organisation does not need a licence for Highcharts and if I was an employee of this organisation I could just use highcharts to develop a Highcharts enabled website for them. 

My questions are:

1. Is my previous assumption that if an in-house team develops the organisation's website then a licence is not required correct?
2. If I am not an employee of of that organisation but I am just contracted **as an individual** to create and deliver a Highcharts enabled website for them, do I need to purchase a licence for Highcharts?
3. If I belong to a for-profit company which is contracted to develop a to create and deliver a Highcharts enabled website to a non-profit organisation, is a licence required in that case and if yes, what kind of licence (assuming that Highcharts is not generally going to be used by that company in any other projects or services)?

Answer: 
The CC-BY-NC 3.0 license has this to say about non-commercial/commercial use:

> 
> You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.
> 
> 
> — [CC-BY-NC 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode) section 4.b
> 
> 
> 

So contrary to the Highcharts FAQ it is not relevant what the *identity* of the user is: the actual license makes no distinction between individuals and organizations, or between non-profits, government agencies, and companies.
The relevant part is the *manner* and *intent* with which the work is used. In particular, non-profit organizations sometimes do commercial things like fundraising.

What exactly non-commercial use means is left intentionally vague in the CC-BY-NC license. The Creative Commons Wiki has a page on the [NonCommerical Interpretation](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpretation) but that is not part of the license. For cases that are not clear you'll have to ask the licensor, though in this case they might be biased towards interpreting usage as commercial use.

It is my subjective understanding that an organization may use a CC-BY-NC work if their use is clearly not primarily commercial, e.g. as part of an awareness and information campaign. This looks different if the “awareness campaign” is actually an advertisement for a product or for a fundraiser. If an otherwise informational web page gets a “donate now!” button, that would look commercial to me. Similarly, I would interpret use as part of internal accounting software as commercial use.

While the use of the non-profit organization may be non-commercial, this does not mean that your use as part of developing the work is also non-commercial. If you are selling a web page to the organization, that looks commercial to me.

Note that this answer is purely about the concepts of the CC-BY-NC license. I am not a lawyer and cannot advise on the licensing scheme of any concrete product.
No answer seems to have told you this already so let me highlight that Highcharts is *not* open source nor free software! On their website they are very careful not to use these terms. Instead they say that they are "Free for non-commercial" (this means at no cost) and "Open" (which is vague but is basically about trying to benefit from the advantage of open source without fully committing to it). Indeed, they are developed in the open, on GitHub and anyone can contribute.

Next, I wouldn't venture in giving definite answers to your questions because the interpretation of the non-commercial clause might very well vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. So I cannot advise you in any way except to tell you that you should either:

1. Talk to a lawyer.
2. Ask to Highcharts themselves in writing, and hope that they give you a clear answer (this should help you to defend yourself in court if they later change their interpretation).