[License-discuss] OSL and GPLv3

Wed Jun 19 13:04:03 UTC 2019

Alexander, in your opinion, if the libraries are correctly used, without
modifications, this ok to ship them whatever license they use?

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Antoine Thomas aka ttoine

Developer Advocate

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

antoine.thomas at prestashop.com

On Wed, 19 Jun 2019 at 14:53, Alexander Terekhov <herr.alter at gmail.com>
wrote:

> "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
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> 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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