[License-discuss] OSL and GPLv3

Wed Jun 19 12:52:02 UTC 2019

"A project" == https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthology - nothing more or
less than that.

The issue of "compatibility" is overstated by the proponents of "strong
copyleft".

Just 0.2€

Am Mi., 19. Juni 2019 um 11:29 Uhr schrieb Antoine Thomas <
antoine.thomas at prestashop.com>:

> 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
>>
> _______________________________________________
> License-discuss mailing list
> License-discuss at lists.opensource.org
>
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20190619/aacd3c47/attachment-0001.html>