Re: [epl-discuss] EPL-2.0 + GPL secondary license

[Mike Milinkovich <mike.milinkovich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Daniel,

We are very happy to hear that the Clojure community is considering re-licensing under the EPLv2. That is very much appreciated.

We are still working on our official EPLv2 FAQ, and hope to publish that next week. We had hoped to have it done by now, but things got busy around here.

Some answers are inlined below, but the FAQ will be providing the definitive answers. My apologies that we haven't made that available already.

On 2017-10-05 6:27 PM, Daniel Compton wrote:

I'm an administrator at Clojars, the Clojure community's open source Maven repository. Clojure and the Clojure ecosystem are heavy users of EPL-1.0. We're looking at EPL-2.0 and in particular its secondary license which would allow Clojure libraries to have GPL compatibility.

We do not believe that you can add GPL compatibility without getting the prior approval of every contributor that you have had in the past. Adding a Secondary License is adding permissions that you did not get from those contributors, so you need their permission.

I suspect that means that adding GPL compatibility is well nigh impossible for Clojure at this point.

I've done a bit of searching on the mailing list threads about this, and have a few questions.

1. What exactly does someone have to do to include the GPL compatibility clause? It looks like they have to add this to somewhere in the project? It's not clear to me where the statement in Appendix A should live? Is it added to the included license file with the secondary licenses filled out, or would it stand separately in the README (for example)?

"This Source Code may also be made available under the following 

Secondary Licenses when the conditions for such availability set forth 

in the Eclipse Public License, v. 2.0 are satisfied: {name license(s),

version(s), and exceptions or additional permissions here}."

We have been advising Eclipse Foundation projects to put this in their fileheaders. Take a look at the fileheaders used by the Eclipse OpenJ9 project to get an idea.

I *think* we are also suggesting that they include this notice in their NOTICE file as well, but I might be wrong about that.

/*******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 1991, 2014 IBM Corp. and others
 *
 * This program and the accompanying materials are made available under
 * the terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 which accompanies this
 * distribution and is available at https://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0/
 * or the Apache License, Version 2.0 which accompanies this distribution and
 * is available at https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.
 *
 * This Source Code may also be made available under the following
 * Secondary Licenses when the conditions for such availability set
 * forth in the Eclipse Public License, v. 2.0 are satisfied: GNU
 * General Public License, version 2 with the GNU Classpath
 * Exception [1] and GNU General Public License, version 2 with the
 * OpenJDK Assembly Exception [2].
 *
 * [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html
 * [2] http://openjdk.java.net/legal/assembly-exception.html
 *
 * SPDX-License-Identifier: EPL-2.0 OR Apache-2.0
 *******************************************************************************/

2. What is the legal impact of adding a secondary GPL license? Is this the same as dual licensing, or is this different? What additional restrictions or benefits does this give to someone who added a secondary license?

It is so close to dual licensing that it almost doesn't matter. The only difference that I can say is that the code truly does live under the EPLv2 until such time as someone combines it with other code under the Secondary License, and then distributes the combined work under the Secondary License.

The EPLv2 fileheaders would always remain on the code even if it has been made available under the secondary license.

I know the license has just come out, but it seems like these could be good questions to add to the FAQ at some point?

Absolutely. My apologies that the FAQ is not already available.

I hope that helps.