Home » Eclipse Projects » Equinox » Equinox, the EPL, and the GPL
| Equinox, the EPL, and the GPL [message #68961] |
Tue, 27 June 2006 04:18  |
Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: kgilmer.gmail.com
Hello,
Regarding license safety between the EPL and GPL:
1. I take a GPLed library, wrap it in an OSGi bundle, add the necessary
interfaces to bind it for service discovery.
2. Release that bundle code as GPL to satisfy the license.
3. Bind to those interfaces in other (non GPL) bundles and access the
GPLed library.
Is this legit? It obviously seems it should be, given that GPLed and
commercial plugins are available, but I want to check. If so, is there
anything more than just releasing the OSGi glue code as GPL to satisfy
the license?
TIA, Ken
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| Re: Equinox, the EPL, and the GPL [message #68982 is a reply to message #68961] |
Tue, 27 June 2006 05:06  |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: alex_blewitt.yahoo.com
I don't think this is anything Equinox specific; nor, for that matter, anything to do with the EPL. It's really just a question of the GPL and what you can do with it. You should really consult an appropriately qualified lawyer (and it's unlikely, but not impossible, that there are any reading this news group) to get your question answered.
IANAL either, but my understanding of the GPL is that you cannot. If it were LGPL, I'd suspect that it may be. From the FSF's website:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibl eLicenses
The following licenses are free software licenses, but are not compatible with the GNU GPL:
...
Eclipse Public License Version 1.0: The Eclipse Public License is similar to the Common Public License, and our comments on the CPL apply equally to the EPL. The only change is that the EPL removes the broader patent retaliation language regarding patent infringement suits specifically against Contributors to the EPL'd program.
...
The Common Public License is incompatible with the GPL because it has various specific requirements that are not in the GPL.
For example, it requires certain patent licenses be given that the GPL does not require. (We don't think those patent license requirements are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL.)
There's also more documentation available at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html -- but particular points to draw from it include:
"This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General Public License instead of this License."
"You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that ...
you must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."
In other words (and in my interpretation; and I'm still not a lawyer) you can only use/distribute the GPL code in other GPL environments. So since you can't relicence the EPL'd code in Eclipse as GPL, that would preclude shipping any form of GPL code with Eclipse.
If it were the LGPL, you might be OK:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html
"A program that contains no derivative of any portion of the Library, but is designed to work with the Library by being compiled or linked with it, is called a "work that uses the Library". Such a work, in isolation, is not a derivative work of the Library, and therefore falls outside the scope of this License."
But you should check with a lawyer rather than relying on an uninformed post by someone from a newsgroup (or mail the EFF regarding the GPL -- there's links on their site). Note that the EPL and Eclipse/Equinox aren't the issue here -- it's what you can do with the GPL code that's the issue.
Alex.
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