For Approval: Eclipse Public License - v 1.0

[Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.]

As the submitter of the EPL indicates, the EPL is substantially identical to
the CPL, except for the provision in art. 7 on patent litigation, which is
removed in the EPL. Though the deleted provision is certainly a substantive
change, it is not pertinent to the OSD. Therefore, I recommend its approval.

As an aside, the Eclipse Foundation may find it helpful to add a clarifying
statement to their website concerning the relationship - - or lack
thereof - - between the EPL, CPL, and IPL for their own project software.
(i.e. does one displace the other at a given point in time?)  It is easy to
(mistakenly?) view the EPL as a revision of the CPL and the CPL as an
iteration or ostensible twin of the IPL.

Rod


Rod Dixon
Blog: http://opensource.cyberspaces.org





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ma, Philip" <philip.ma at hp.com>
To: <license-discuss at opensource.org>
Cc: "Rank, Michael J" <mike.rank at hp.com>
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 6:27 PM
Subject: For Approval: Eclipse Public License - v 1.0



APPROVAL REQUEST:
When the Eclipse consortium was first formed in November 2001, IBM's
Common Public License v 1.0 (CPL) was used to license the initial
Eclipse code base as open source.  The CPL was already approved by the
OSI at that time as conforming to the Open Source Definition.  When
Eclipse evolved into the Eclipse Foundation in February 2004, the
membership of the new Foundation adopted their own open source license,
the Eclipse Public License v 1.0 (EPL).  The EPL is based entirely on
the CPL with three differences.  The differences between CPL and EPL are
as follows:

1) The removal of Section 7, Paragraph 2, Sentence 1 of the CPL:
"If Recipient institutes patent litigation against a Contributor with
respect to a patent applicable to software (including a cross-claim or
counterclaim in a lawsuit), then any patent licenses granted by that
Contributor to such Recipient under this Agreement shall terminate as of
the date such litigation is filed."
2) Name changed from "Common..." to "Eclipse Public License" in
title and opening paragraph
3) Agreement Steward changed from IBM to Eclipse Foundation in Sec
7, Para 4, Sent 4.

The Eclipse Foundation has determined that these differences have no
effect on the EPL's conformance to the Open Source Definition, and
respectfully requests OSI Board approval of the EPL.


LICENSE ATTACHMENT, LINK:
Attached is a plain text versions of the EPL.
An HTML version of the EPL can be found at:
http://www.eclipse.org/org/documents/epl-v10.html


SUBMITTED BY:
Mike Rank & Philip Ma - Eclipse Foundation Legal Advisory Committee
Chairship, On Behalf of the Eclipse Foundation Board of Directors

Questions regarding the Eclipse Public License can be directed to:
Mike Rank:  mike.rank at hp.com
Philip Ma:  philip.ma at hp.com


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