Eclipse Community Forums: Equinox » GNU/GPL V3 license in bundles and Equinox

Help

Home

Home » Eclipse Projects » Equinox » GNU/GPL V3 license in bundles and Equinox

Show: Today's Messages :: Show Polls :: Message Navigator

GNU/GPL V3 license in bundles and Equinox [message #1033806]

Thu, 04 April 2013 17:04

Pablo Mising name

Messages: 24
Registered: July 2010

Junior Member

Hi all.

I am developing several bundles that can be executed in any OSGi container for stuff [1]. I would like to set GNU/GPL V3 to my source code (available here [2]). My question is: can I distribute my set of bundles plus the necessary Equinox bundles (in a .zip) as a complete application (that is, my bundles and the org.eclipse.equinox, ds, configuration manager... bundles) or is there any incompatibility with the licenses?

Apparently the Eclipse Licence and GPL/V3 does not allow to mix their code. However, in my case, no code is mixed (that is, I do not use org.eclipse.* packages in my code, for example). My bundles are independent of the OSGi environment (can also be executed in Apache Felix).

In [3] the FSF says that with Eclipse Plug-ins the licenses are incompatible, but we are talking now about OSGi bundles, where code is not mixed (Equinox includes bundles with Apache License, for example).

So, can I distribute a .zip with my bundles (GPLV3) together with a set of Equinox bundles?

Thanks!

[1] http://www.osgiliath.org
[2] http://osgiliath.svn.sourceforge.net/
[3] http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/using-the-gpl-for-eclipse-plug-ins

Report message to a moderator

Re: GNU/GPL V3 license in bundles and Equinox [message #1033877 is a reply to message #1033806]

Thu, 04 April 2013 18:52

BJ Hargrave

Messages: 59
Registered: July 2009

Member

I think you need to consult a lawyer. Not a bunch of developers...

Report message to a moderator

Re: GNU/GPL V3 license in bundles and Equinox [message #1034321 is a reply to message #1033877]

Fri, 05 April 2013 09:43

Pablo Mising name

Messages: 24
Registered: July 2010

Junior Member

Well, I thought all the developers of this forum have to deal with the Eclipse License if they want to distribute their projects, but thanks for your response...

Report message to a moderator

Re: GNU/GPL V3 license in bundles and Equinox [message #1034352 is a reply to message #1033806]

Fri, 05 April 2013 10:32

Mickael Istria

Messages: 860
Registered: July 2009
Location: Grenoble, France

Senior Member

From an Eclipse/EPL POV, You can write and share your bundles in any
license you'd like. However you're not allowed the change license of the
other bundle.
So you need to make it clear in the global license of your software that
you have some EPL bundles, and you'll need to tweak the GPL and set up a
license exception to allow usage of EPL code from you GPL
You can read more here:
http://mmilinkov.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/epl-gpl-commentary/

HTH
--
Mickael Istria
JBoss, by Red Hat
My blog: http://mickaelistria.wordpress.com
My Tweets: http://twitter.com/mickaelistria

Report message to a moderator

Re: GNU/GPL V3 license in bundles and Equinox [message #1036456 is a reply to message #1034352]

Mon, 08 April 2013 12:08

Pablo Mising name

Messages: 24
Registered: July 2010

Junior Member

After reading your resource I am thinking in migrate to a dual-license of EPL-LGPL, as in logback (http://logback.qos.ch/license.html ).

Thank you, Michael!

Report message to a moderator

Previous Topic:	Registering a "ToString-Handler" in Equinox console for custom objects?
Next Topic:	Equinox console error

Goto Forum:

-=] Back to Top [=-

[ Syndicate this forum (XML) ] [

]

Current Time: Mon Oct 25 14:55:26 GMT 2021

.:: Contact :: Home ::.

Breadcrumbs

Sign up to our Newsletter