[copyleft-next] Compatibility with Eclipse Public License.

Richard Fontana fontana at sharpeleven.org
Tue Aug 7 16:22:17 UTC 2012


On 08/07/2012 01:34 AM, Luis Villa wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Tom Marble <tmarble at info9.net> wrote:
> 
>> AFAICT the incompatibility rises from the EPL choice of venue [2]
>> which makes EPL not GPL compatible.
> 
> Hi, Tom-
> There is a deeper problem, inherent to the nature of copyleft. EPL states:
> 
> "When the Program is made available in source code form:
> 
> a) it must be made available under this Agreement;"
> 
> That's the essence of the copyleft, and says "once the source is under
> this license, it must stay under this license." Other copylefts have
> the same kind of language, leading to a conflict - both licenses say
> "the _entire copylefted work_ must be under this license," so as soon
> as there is overlap between the two copylefted works (say, because you
> place one EPL file in a GPL application, or vice-versa), you have a
> problem.
> 
> MPL 2, Sec. 3.3, or copyleft.next Sec. 11, get around this to some
> extent, but only one-way. Short of an EPL 2.0 that has a similar
> clause I don't think you can have the sort of compatibility you seem
> to envision.

Luis, what's your take (if any) on MPL/EPL compatibility?

- Richard





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