| Dual License with EPL and Apache 2.0 [message #1276165] |
Mon, 24 March 2014 03:12  |
Eclipse User |
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There are some projects in Eclipse foundation which uses this approach like Vert.x.
Extending Xtext means that the extension also have significant derived parts from Xtext which means your extension also has to be in EPL unlike in a Library when you link to EPL software you can retain any license you want. So best is to have Xtext with a more flexible license also so this issue does not come up.
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| Re: Dual License with EPL and Apache 2.0 [message #1279861 is a reply to message #1279781] |
Sat, 29 March 2014 07:06  |
| Eclipse User |
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You'll need to consult a lawyer, and I am not a lawyer. I did work at
IBM and was involved there in these kinds of discusses and I am on the
Eclipse Board, including on the board's IP advisory committee, so I do
have some experience with this area. Based on this experience, I know
for a fact that when you talk to lawyers, each will put a slightly
different personal slant on things, and none will give you a definitive
statement unless you pay them a lot of money, and even then, nothing
guarantees that their opinion will hold up in a court of law. So good
luck with that approach...
On the pragmatic side of things, consider your concern with regard to a
specific real analogous example. EMF has templates for generating all
kinds of code. The templates are complex and full of very detailed
interesting design patterns, so much so that it's enough to produce a
fully functional Eclipse application from a model description. Those
templates are definitely under the EPL. If you modify the template, the
EPL applies to your modification. But, when you feed in a model---one
you designed and hence is your Intellectual Property (IP)---out will
come a complete application which you might be concerned is derivative
work of the template. Of course it's clear that it's also derivative
work of the IP (model) you feed into the template. It's always been my
position (and no one has ever contradicted me, including lawyers) that
the resulting generated code is license free and purely the intellectual
property of the model author. The author is free to apply any license
to the generated code and is free to copyright it as they see fit. There
are literally thousands of organizations that consider such generated
code equivalent to having written every last line themselves, from
scratch, so I think any court ruling to the contrary would destroy an
entire ecosystem. It's impossible to imagine that ever being the case.
So in the case of Xtext, again you feed in your IP (a grammar in this
case) and out pops your fully functional application, free of license
and purely your IP, no ifs, ands, ors or buts. Again, a great many
organizations have done this and happily consider it purely their own IP
and happily publish it under whatever license and with whatever
copyright turns their crank.
There's no point in further discussion because only a legal ruling would
hold any real weight. I'll assert that this will never happen because
the open source community at Eclipse has no interest in asserting
copyrights or licenses for generated code. Moreover, we disapprove of
and reject any such notion and would work actively against any legal
action moving in that direction.
On 29/03/2014 9:03 AM, Suminda Sirinath Salpitikorala Dharmasena wrote:
> 1) EPL is explicit about Source Code (SC) and Object Code (OC) for
> Derived Works (DW) in Section 3
> 2) Will there SC which is a DW of OC / SC in light of authorship laws
> E.g. derived from a template in SC/OC format or by a wizard in which
> case the authorship depending on the jurisdiction may be the person
> initiating the wizard or the entity who created the wizard as the
> process using the wizard does not have much intellectual involvement.
> 3) Will this produce any DW artifacts which will not fall into legally
> plausible definitions of SC or OC.
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