[License-discuss] Red Hat compilation copyright & RHEL contract

[Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz]

Nick Yeates wrote:>I too am curious what this "compilation license"ing is
and what its benefits are. Mr Kuhn >asked, and Larry responded saying
basically 'its not so odd - I use it often' and Larry did >not state *why*
he advises use of this licensing strategy from a business, social or other
>standpoint.
>
>1) Why?
>2) What is the "standard" way of doing this?

Frequent cases are submitted when developers (in particular European
administrations and Member states) have build applications from multiple
components, plus adding their own code, and want to use a single license
for distributing the whole compilation. In many cases their policy is to
use the European Union Public Licence (EUPL) for administrative or
linguistic reasons (using a license with working value in multiple
languages). Therefore I published a matrix on Joinup (
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/page/eupl/eupl-compatible-open-source-licences
).
(the matrix should be updated due to new license versions, i.e. the recent
OSI-approved CeCILL 2.1 which is now fully EUPL and GPL compatible)



2013/9/10 Nick Yeates <nyeates1 at umbc.edu>

> From http://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/corp/RH-3573_284204_TM_Gd.pdf
> > At the same time, the combined body of work that constitutes Red Hat®
> > Enterprise Linux® is a collective work which has been organized by Red
> > Hat, and Red Hat holds the copyright in that collective work.
>
> Bradley Kuhn wrote at 15:46 on Monday:
> > … It's admittedly a strange behavior,
> > and I've been asking Red Hat Legal for many years now to explain better
> > why they're doing this and what they believe it's accomplishing.
>
> Larry Rosen wrote at 23:28 on Thursday:
> > I often recommend that licensing method to those of my clients who
> combine
> > various FOSS works into a single software package. It isn't odd at all.
> Even
> > if GPL applies to one or more of those internal components, there is no
> need
> > to license the entire collective work under the GPL. We've even
> distributed
> > GPL software as part of collective works under the OSL.
>
> I too am curious what this "compilation license"ing is and what its
> benefits are. Mr Kuhn asked, and Larry responded saying basically 'its not
> so odd - I use it often' and Larry did not state *why* he advises use of
> this licensing strategy from a business, social or other standpoint.
>
> 1) Why larry?
> 2) What is the "standard" way of doing this? How do most other org's
> license many works together?
>
> Full disclosure: I work for Red Hat, though am writing this from my
> personal account and perspective. I am a beginner on my knowledge into OSS
> license details, so please realize that I am attempting to learn. I could
> go and ask around in my company about this, yet I would rather engage with
> the community on this for now.
>
> -Nick Yeates
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>



-- 
Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz
pe.schmitz at googlemail.com
tel. + 32 478 50 40 65
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