ASF Licensing policy and the EPL (was: javadoc something something...)

[Leo Simons <ma...@leosimons.com>]

Hi all,

On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 11:56:56PM -0500, Jeremy Huiskamp wrote:
> I was wondering about this myself.  I went and slogged through the  
> epl and had trouble gathering exactly what the license restrictions  
> were.  From what I could tell, most of it was just disclaimer. 

Nah, besides all the disclaimer stuff and the granting of various rights
there's also some "viralness" in there. The EPL is "completely" viral for
source code, and for object form, relicensing is explicitly allowed but
requires a notice with the software that source code is available. However,
even then, the "viralness" is restricted completely to the EPL-ed software
and/or any derivative works.

For example, if you have a javadoc tool licensed under the EPL, a doclet
would not be a derivative work, hence you could ship the doclet with the
object form version of the EPL and the EPL would not apply to the doclet.

I think. IANAL. Not legal advice. Blah.

> What is the official apache stance on epl code?
> 
> On 9-Feb-06, at 11:48 PM, Anthony Green wrote:
> 
> >On Thu, 2006-02-09 at 13:41 -0500, Geir Magnusson Jr wrote:
> >>We were planning to just use the eclipse compiler.  No reason to  
> >>rewrite.
> >
> >Didn't you just write in this thread that you need "all the tooling"?
> >What makes the compiler special?  

Nothing.

> If you can non-Apache FOSS licensed
> >tools, why not just use the excellent gjdoc for your javadoc tool?
> >
> >http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/cp-tools/

For licensing reasons, and for licensing reasons only.

Apache does not yet have an "official stance" on the EPL license nor on
the GPL+Exception license for GNU Classpath, but we're getting quite
close to having a detailed, official and clear-worded policy on most of
this. Unfortunately, the precise information is all still restricted to
private mailing lists but that will also change soon (fingers crossed).

IIRC, Apache projects will be allowed to redistribute EPL-licensed
software in binary form. The situation with GPL (exception or not) is
more involved, and goes further than just the virality and patent
clause problems we've extensively discussed before. (I think sublicensing
is one of the key bits).

Note that "redistribute" is different from "use". (I just answered the
question for redistribution since I'm guessing it is part of what you
meant here.) Even right now, before there is any kind of new policy, there
is nothing stopping us from *using* gjdoc, just as there is nothing
stopping us from using GCC.

cheers,

Leo