EPL licence for emacs extension distributed via ELPA.

EPL licence for emacs extension distributed via ELPA.

[kostafey]

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Hi, all!

I am going to do an emacs extension on emacs lisp and clojure languages.
The problem is that I should include external clojure project (it is used
as a library),
distribued on the terms of Eclipse Public License 1.0 with a tiny
modification.

The questions are:

1) Is it possible to distribute via ELPA (in repositories like marmalade or
melpa)
my code with GPL licence together with this EPL code?

2) If no, should I re-license the whole code on EPL? Is it possible to
distribute
emacs extension with Eclipse Public License via ELPA?

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Re: EPL licence for emacs extension distributed via ELPA.

[Bastien]

Hi Kostafey,

kostafey <kostafey@gmail.com> writes:

> The questions are:
>
> 1) Is it possible to distribute via ELPA (in repositories like 
> marmalade or melpa)
> my code with GPL licence together with this EPL code?

Yes.

"ELPA" is ambiguous.

There is GNU ELPA (http://elpa.gnu.org/) and all packages in this
repository follow the same rules than Emacs code.  Code must be GPL,
documentation must be GFDL, authors have to assign their copyright
to the Free Software Foundation.

There are other repositories, like Marmelade.

In this case, you have to follow the policy of the repository you are
using.  AFAIK Marmelade does not enforce any particular license so you
should be fine.

By the way, the project looks interesting, I'm looking forward to
testing it!

-- 
 Bastien

EPL licence for emacs extension distributed via ELPA.

[kostafey]

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>kostafey <kostafey@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> The questions are:
>>
>> 1) Is it possible to distribute via ELPA (in repositories like
>> marmalade or melpa)
>> my code with GPL licence together with this EPL code?
>
>Yes.

Thank you!

> There are other repositories, like Marmelade.
>
> In this case, you have to follow the policy of the repository you are
> using.  AFAIK Marmelade does not enforce any particular license so you
> should be fine.

I haven't find licence demands for this repositories, but I thought that
all emacs-related code must be GPL. Thanks for explanation.

> By the way, the project looks interesting, I'm looking forward to
> testing it!

Well, in spite of the fact I already use it in my day-to-day work it's slill
in the deep alpha. Many refactoring and clean-up is required.
Any suggestions are welcome.

So, the link is:
https://github.com/kostafey/ejc-sql
Some usage remarks in the commentaries of ejc-sql.el:
https://github.com/kostafey/ejc-sql/blob/master/src/ejc_sql/ejc-sql.el

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Re: EPL licence for emacs extension distributed via ELPA.

[Bastien]

kostafey <kostafey@gmail.com> writes:

> Well, in spite of the fact I already use it in my day-to-day work
> it's slill
> in the deep alpha. Many refactoring and clean-up is required.
> Any suggestions are welcome.
>
> So, the link is:
> https://github.com/kostafey/ejc-sql
> Some usage remarks in the commentaries of ejc-sql.el:
> https://github.com/kostafey/ejc-sql/blob/master/src/ejc_sql/
> ejc-sql.el

Looks interesting, I'll have a look!

-- 
 Bastien

Re: EPL licence for emacs extension distributed via ELPA.

[Glenn Morris]

kostafey wrote:

>>> 1) Is it possible to distribute via ELPA (in repositories like
>>> marmalade or melpa) my code with GPL licence together with this EPL
>>> code?

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#EPL

   The Eclipse Public License is similar to the Common Public License, and
   our comments on the CPL apply equally to the EPL.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CommonPublicLicense10

   This is a free software license. Unfortunately, its weak copyleft and
   choice of law clause make it incompatible with the GNU GPL.

So I'm not sure you can distribute it anywhere...

If the EPL piece is used as a library, you may need to read
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FSWithNFLibs

(But this is unrelated to Emacs and ELPA, so this may not be the best
place to get answers to such questions.)

> I haven't find licence demands for this repositories, but I thought that
> all emacs-related code must be GPL.

This has been asked a few times; I'm not sure I've ever seen a
definitive answer. Ref eg

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-11/msg01280.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-04/msg01368.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-05/msg01424.html

Re: EPL licence for emacs extension distributed via ELPA.

[kostafey]

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Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> wrote:

> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CommonPublicLicense10
>
>    This is a free software license. Unfortunately, its weak copyleft and
>    choice of law clause make it incompatible with the GNU GPL.
>
> So I'm not sure you can distribute it anywhere...

I've read about incompatibility of GPL and EPL. That's why I've asked this
question in hope of some exception for use external code as library.

> If the EPL piece is used as a library, you may need to read
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FSWithNFLibs

It's just recommendations and nothing about distribution.

Maybe I need a permit from author of this library?

>> I haven't find licence demands for this repositories, but I thought that
>> all emacs-related code must be GPL.
>
> This has been asked a few times; I'm not sure I've ever seen a
> definitive answer. Ref eg

It seems, I can relicence the whole code to EPL in the last resort.

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Re: EPL licence for emacs extension distributed via ELPA.

[Glenn Morris]

kostafey wrote:

> It seems, I can relicence the whole code to EPL in the last resort.

As I said, I'm not sure you can distribute an Emacs extension using a
non-GPL compatible license...

I'm sorry, I don't know what the actual answer to your question is, nor
where to point you get a real answer.

Re: EPL licence for emacs extension distributed via ELPA.

[Stefan Monnier]

> I am going to do an emacs extension on emacs lisp and clojure
> languages.  The problem is that I should include external clojure
> project (it is used as a library), distribued on the terms of Eclipse
> Public License 1.0 with a tiny modification.

I'm not sure what the above really means, but the following guidelines
might help clarify:
- Elisp code basically needs to be distributed under a license
  compatible with the GPL since it necessary links to the rest of Emacs
  which is GPL'd.
- Same for Emacs extensions written in C.
- Emacs code can interact with external applications via pipes without
  any restriction on those applications's licensing model.
- You can distribute as a single package a combination of GPL'd Elisp/C
  code together with some other code using a different license: the mere
  fact of putting it all into a single tarball does not force you to use
  the same licenses for all the files.

> 1) Is it possible to distribute via ELPA (in repositories like
> marmalade or melpa) my code with GPL licence together with this
> EPL code?

I don't see a particular problem in this regard from any ELPA repository
(including GNU ELPA).


        Stefan