which license to use for software using components with GPL, LGPL and EPL?

[John Cowan]

Ian Vernon scripsit:

> We are writing a software platform that uses components that are licensed
> udder GPL, LGPL and EPL. Both FSF and EF claims that GPL and EPL are not
> compatible, while we want to release the software platform as open as
> possible we would not want to redo 18 calendar months (I know we should have
> checked license conditions early on) of work due to a potential license
> incompatibility between GPL and EPL. From various posting the
> incompatibility seems to have risen from the definition of derivative works.
> Having said what do you think are our choices for licensing?

You don't have any.  Your project has type A blood, and you have given
it a transfusion of type B blood.  As of now, it is on life support.
You have three choices:

1) Get a hairy lawyer who can talk you out of your current situation.
His best bet is probably to negotiate with the owners of the GPL code,
although if it's the FSF, they're most likely *not* going to want to
be helpful.  (We have a few suitably hirsute lawyers on this list,
notably Larry Rosen.)

2) Start reimplementing either the EFL or the GPL modules.  Best practice
is to boil down the function of those modules to an English-language
description, and hand that description to some newly hired folks who
haven't even seen any part of the code they are going to replace.

3) Cross your fingers and hope.

Note that these options are not incompatible, and in fact you should
probably consider doing all three at once.

I am most definitely *not* a lawyer; this is most emphatically *not*
legal advice.

-- 
John Cowan   http://ccil.org/~cowan    cowan at ccil.org
We want more school houses and less jails; more books and less arsenals;
more learning and less vice; more constant work and less crime; more
leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of
the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.  --Samuel Gompers