[License-discuss] OSL and GPLv3

Wed Jun 19 09:05:33 UTC 2019

Patrice,

One last question. You said:
> the EUPL covered code is publicly available and reusable in other
projects covered by OSL, GPL-2.0, GPL-3.0, LGPL etc.

But what about the opposite, using OSL, GPL-2.0, GPL-3.0, LGPL etc. in a
EUPL project? and then ship it?

Antoine

[image: PrestaShop]
<https://www.prestashop.com/?utm_source=signature&utm_medium=e-mail&utm_campaign=emails-signatures>

Antoine Thomas aka ttoine

Developer Advocate

t: +33 (0)6 63 13 79 06

antoine.thomas at prestashop.com

On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 at 23:17, Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz <
pe.schmitz at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Dear Antoine,
> Providing a definitive legal answer (and certainty) in your specific case
> is difficult.
> At Joinup.eu we constantly promote interoperability and the respect of
> primary licences.
> Therefore, in our view, a global project may include components under
> several licences and each component should keep its licence (by the way, we
> spell it "licence" and not "license" as in US).
> You wrote the you "use" libraries.
> As I said, "using" a library according to its normal usage instruction
> should never impact the licensing of a resulting work.
> To take a very trivial example, If someone writes a novel and distributes
> it electronically to third parties as a ."doc file",  this file (in MS
> proprietary format) may contain some Microsoft proprietary code or data
> formats, but this is the result of the normal use of MS/word and Microsoft
> will not request any copyright on this novel.
> In case of linking, the copy or reuse or decompilation of data formats/API
> needed for implementing interoperability is considered as a copyright
> exception by the European law and I am not aware of any case law
> contradicting that point, even outside Europe. Does anyone knows?
> So the real issue that you could meet is in case of real merging of
> software codes from components covered by incompatible licences (in all
> other cases each component could be licensed under its primary licence,
> i.e. OSL or or LGPL or GPL). This is to avoid, generally speaking.
> The French reference you mention is outdated regarding the EUPL-1.2 which
> is now compatible with all the copyleft licences listed in this "Veni Vidi
> Libri" table..
> For this reason, the EUPL-1.2 was preferred in case of project integrating
> multiple components, as it was reported by Dr Martin Serrano (Fiesta-IoT
> project) in a recent Joinup published interview:
>
> https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/inline-files/SC50_D06.01.02_EUPL_Interview_summary_vFINAL.pdf
>
> Of course, you will never obtain a 100% guarantee of legal security in all
> possible cases and jurisdictions around the world, but the fact is that the
> EUPL covered code is publicly available and reusable in other projects
> covered by OSL, GPL-2.0, GPL-3.0, LGPL etc. So no one should have any real
> interest in litigation.
> Best,
> Patrice
>
>
>
>
> Le mar. 18 juin 2019 à 17:02, Antoine Thomas <
> antoine.thomas at prestashop.com> a écrit :
>
>> Patrice, thanks a lot for your answer.
>>
>> About your introduction question: the original code of PrestaShop project
>> is currently in OSL, with some modules in AFL. We also rely on librairies
>> in MIT and BSD, shipped with the installer (like the Symfony framework).
>> But, we would like to use a few librairies in LGPL and GPLv3 to accelerate
>> our developments and features. And we feel limited by the use of the OSL
>> license: it is difficult to find information about compatibility and other
>> feedback, as only a few projects are using it.
>>
>> So, if I understand well, changing the license of the project to EUPL-1.2
>> could allow a project to include and ship both OSL (like our current code)
>> and GPLv3 (some new libraries) code? Interesting. Would this be possible
>> only in the European legal framework, or also outside Europe?
>>
>> I had a quick look at an other reference (in French, but easy to
>> understand), a compatibility table between licenses:
>>
>> https://vvlibri.org/fr/guide-de-lauteur-libre-gerer-des-licences-differentes-compatibilites-de-licences/tableau-de
>> Maybe this table needs to be updated about EUPL? What do you think? Do
>> you have an equivalent on joinup.eu?
>>
>> Or maybe, if we follow this table, the best way is to change the license
>> of the OSL code, and move it to GPLv3. That would be a huge IP work, to
>> check with all authors of the project's code if they agree. But that would
>> be an interesting investment in IP for our community of users and
>> developers. And, also, in a time when many business backed open source
>> project move to proprietary, this would be a strong message of PrestaShop's
>> commitment to open source.
>>
>> Patrice, what do you think? is it possible to have your feedback on this
>> questions and hypothesis? Maybe some other reader of this mailing list
>> could have feedback to share?
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Antoine
>>
>>
>> [image: PrestaShop]
>> <https://www.prestashop.com/?utm_source=signature&utm_medium=e-mail&utm_campaign=emails-signatures>
>>
>> Antoine Thomas aka ttoine
>>
>> Developer Advocate
>>
>> t: +33 (0)6 63 13 79 06
>>
>> antoine.thomas at prestashop.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 at 13:53, Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz via
>> License-discuss <license-discuss at lists.opensource.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Antoine,
>>> It seems related to the question: how far is your project (that would be
>>> globally licensed under OSL) a derivative of the GPL-3.0 code, or not?
>>> It is also related to your legal framework, in so far the various codes
>>> are more or less closely linked.
>>> The European legal framework considers that the normal and fair use of a
>>> tool (like a library, according to its usage instructions, without
>>> modifying the library source code) does not make resulting works
>>> "derivatives" of the used tool.
>>> In addition, it states (in my opinion) that linking different
>>> components, for the sole and fair purpose of making these components
>>> interoperable, is a copyright exception and cannot be restricted by the
>>> copyright owner. This temperate a lot the theory of "strong copyleft" on
>>> this point. (Law lovers will reed Recital 15 of *Directive 2009/24/EC
>>> <https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32009L0024&from=EN>*).
>>>
>>> An alternative solution is the use of the EUPL-1.2 that is expressly
>>> covered by the European legal framework and is expressly compatible with
>>> both the OSL and the GPL-3.0
>>> More on joinup.eu and in particular the recent JLA (joinup licensing
>>> assistant)
>>> https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/joinup-licensing-assistant-jla
>>>  .
>>> Best regards,
>>> Patrice
>>>
>>>
>>> Le lun. 17 juin 2019 à 11:57, Antoine Thomas <
>>> antoine.thomas at prestashop.com> a écrit :
>>>
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> With our IP team, we have a few questions about compatibility between
>>>> OSLv3 and GPLv3. We consider as acknowledged that it's not possible to
>>>> distribute GPLv2 code in an OSLv3 project. However, what about the more
>>>> recent GPLv3, considered to be more open?
>>>>
>>>> Of course, it's about using librairies and other dependencies in an
>>>> open source project, and then ship it.
>>>>
>>>> So, there are two questions:
>>>>
>>>> 1/ Is it possible to ship GPLv3 code within an OSLv3 project installer?
>>>>
>>>> 2/ Is it possible to ship OSLv3 code within a GPLv3 project installer?
>>>>
>>>> What do you think? what is your experience? Is there some examples?
>>>>
>>>> Best regards,
>>>>
>>>> Antoine
>>>>
>>>> [image: PrestaShop]
>>>> <https://www.prestashop.com/?utm_source=signature&utm_medium=e-mail&utm_campaign=emails-signatures>
>>>>
>>>> Antoine Thomas aka ttoine
>>>>
>>>> Developer Advocate
>>>>
>>>> t: +33 (0)6 63 13 79 06
>>>>
>>>> antoine.thomas at prestashop.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> License-discuss mailing list
>>>> License-discuss at lists.opensource.org
>>>>
>>>> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz
>>> pe.schmitz at googlemail.com
>>> tel. + 32 478 50 40 65
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> License-discuss mailing list
>>> License-discuss at lists.opensource.org
>>>
>>> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
>>>
>>
>
> --
> Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz
> pe.schmitz at googlemail.com
> tel. + 32 478 50 40 65
>
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