It's probable that HighCharts chose CC BY-NC because there has not been a clear legal consensus (much less any sort of case law) on whether proprietary/minified

It's probable that HighCharts chose CC BY-NC because there has not been a clear legal consensus (much less any sort of case law) on whether proprietary/minified Javascript linking to a GPL'd Javascript library is in violation of the GPL. If you want to prevent that type of use of your library without people paying for a license, then CC BY-NC might be a viable choice. For a sampling of how complex the legal issues around the GPL are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Linking_and_derived_works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Lin... However, note that, say, an MIT licensed or BSD licensed or Apache licensed project, developed for noncommercial use, would be prevented from using your library for their layout, because then the non-commercialness of the CC BY-NC could "infect" their project and prevent them from using those licenses. For instance, the Highcharts license caused this project to switch to a competing library altogether: https://github.com/sebastianbergmann/php-code-coverage/issues/192 https://github.com/sebastianbergmann/php-code-coverage/issue... In general, there's no good solution, but I personally shy away from CC-licensed code. (I am not a lawyer, and this should not be construed as legal advice.)