Re: New License/Exception Request: EPL-2.0


Philippe Ombredanne
 

On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 2:52 AM, Wayne Beaton
<wayne.beaton@...> wrote:
The EPL-2.0 has been approved by the OSI and the Eclipse Board of Directors.
[...]
The wrinkle, I think, is that there is a provision in the license for
"secondary license" support. A project team may opt to declare that their
project code is GPL compatible. I believe that this means that GPL
compatibility is an exception; this is compounded by the ability to include
various exceptions to the GPL.

The OpenJ9 project, for example, will be EPL-2.0 with GPL-2.0+CPE+AE. I
think that this would manifest something like this:

EPL-2.0 WITH (GPL-2.0 WITH Classpath-exception-2.0 WITH
Assembly-exception-2.0)

I'm a little concerned that I don't see Assembly-exception-2.0 on the
exceptions list. I assume that this means that I'll have to shepherd this
exception through as well.

Is this syntax even supported?
Hi Wayne!

This syntax is not supported but I do not think this is what you want
nor need exactly.

Reading the EPL 2.0 I see:
> Exhibit A – Form of Secondary Licenses Notice
> "This Source Code is also Distributed under one or more Secondary
Licenses,....

So what this mean is that the EPL 2.0 allows an explicit choice of
licenses. The syntax for choices is an "OR". When this happens and
such an Exhibit A offer this choice, you can use instead something
like:

EPL-2.0 OR GPL-2.0 WITH Classpath-exception-2.0

Assuming you want two exceptions, this is not yet supported but this
could be easily supported IMHO when several exceptions are used:

EPL-2.0 OR (GPL-2.0 WITH (Classpath-exception-2.0 AND
Assembly-exception-2.0))

Or if you always use these two exceptions as a combo it could be best
to either create a license ref
or a new exception combo of the two:

EPL-2.0 OR GPL-2.0 WITH OpenJDK-exceptions

In any case this would never be EPL-2.0 WITH GPL-2.0 IMHO as we have a choice.

As for this http://openjdk.java.net/legal/assembly-exception.html we
likely need a new license id.

The other thing is the Classpath-exception-2.0 and Assembly exception
seem to be very closely related. When I read this
http://openjdk.java.net/legal/exception-modules-2007-05-08.html the
Assembly Exception references the Classpath exception profusely just
to muddy things a bit more: so they seem intimately tied at the hip.

--
Cordially
Philippe Ombredanne

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