Wednesday, October 3, 2012

uDig License Change

As one of the steps of getting ready to join the Eclipse Foundation "LocationTech" Industry working group the uDig project need to change license.

BSD (example EDL)

The uDig project uses a public "Request for Change" procedure for decisions like joining LocationTech and changing license.  While the final decision rests with the project steering committee we *very* interested in hearing from you.

You can quickly fill in the above micropoll survey, comment on this bloc or contact the udig-devel email list, or privately contact Jody Garnett or other member of the project steering committee

2 comments:

Jody Garnett said...

Had a question about EPL and (L)GPL being incompatible.

EPL and LGPL can get along fine (although you are correct that EPL and GPL do not mix).

The Eclipse Foundation has a policy of not distributing code under an LGPL license. Their own EPL license is very similar in spirit .. although different in handling of patents.

But since we were worried we put this card on the table as LocationTech was being founded.

From the LocationTech FAQ:
Q: I'd like to host my project here, but it is LGPL license

A: Sorry, we cannot host LGPL projects. In the case of projects using LGPL components, we can re-distribute the binaries for certain components. We do have explicit permission to re-distribute Geotools, JTS, and GEOS.

Jody Garnett said...

Reporting back from the udig-devel email.

The poll correctly lists the three options as BSD, EPL, MIT.

The proposal refers to the "Eclipse Distribution License" (EDL). This is a short hand used in the eclipse documentation and headers that refers to the BSD 3 Clauses license filled in with "Eclipse Foundation" as the organisation.

Needless causing confusion to be sure; it is however a good example of how BSD is applied. The resulting license is popularly referred to as "BSD Style" since only Berkley can actually release code under a BSD license.