The Eclipse Public License (EPL) is a free and open source software license most notably used for the

Eclipse IDE Eclipse is an integrated development environment (IDE) used in computer programming. It contains a base workspace and an extensible plug-in system for customizing the environment. It is the second-most-popular IDE for Java development, and, un ...

and other projects by the

Eclipse Foundation The Eclipse Foundation AISBL is an independent, Europe-based not-for-profit corporation that acts as a steward of the Eclipse open source software development community, with legal jurisdiction in the European Union. It is an organization suppo ...

. It replaces the Common Public License (CPL) and removes certain terms relating to

litigation - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...

s related to

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

s.In section 7, this sentence is in CPL 1.0, but not EPL 1.0: "If Recipient institutes patent litigation against a Contributor with respect to a patent applicable to software (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit), then any patent licenses granted by that Contributor to such Recipient under this Agreement shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed." The Eclipse Public License is designed to be a business-friendly free software license, and features weaker

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose, ...

provisions than licenses such as the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

(GPL). The receiver of EPL-licensed programs can use, modify, copy and distribute the work and modified versions, in some cases being obligated to release their own changes. The EPL is listed as a free software license by the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

(FSF) and approved by the

Open Source Initiative The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software. It is a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation,_with_501(c)(3).html" ;"title="110. - 6910./ref> is a type o ...

(OSI). Discussion of a new version of the EPL began in May 2013. Version2.0 was announced on 24August 2017. On January 20, 2021, the license steward for the license was changed from Eclipse.org Foundation, Inc. (Delaware, USA) to Eclipse Foundation AISBL (Brussels, Belgium).

Compatibility

The EPL 1.0 is not

compatible Compatibility may refer to: Computing * Backward compatibility, in which newer devices can understand data generated by older devices * Compatibility card, an expansion card for hardware emulation of another device * Compatibility layer, compo ...

with the GPL, and a work created by combining a work licensed under the GPL with a work licensed under the EPL cannot be lawfully distributed. The GPL requires that "

ny distributed work NY most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the Northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York NY, Ny or ny may also refer to: Places * North Yorkshire, ...

that ... contains or is derived from the PL-licensedProgram ... be licensed as a whole ... under the terms of he GPL, and that the distributor not "impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted". The EPL, however, requires that anyone distributing the work grant every recipient a license to any patents that they might hold that cover the modifications they have made. Because this is a "further restriction" on the recipients, distribution of such a combined work does not satisfy the GPL. The EPL, in addition, does not contain a

patent retaliation Opposition to software patents is widespread in the free software community. In response, various mechanisms have been tried to defuse the perceived problem. Positions from the community Community leaders such as Richard Stallman, Alan Cox, B ...

clause.

Derivative works

According to article 1(b) of the EPL, additions to the original work may be licensed independently, including under a

proprietary license Proprietary software is computer software, software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern ...

, provided such additions are "separate modules of software" and do not constitute a

derivative work In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of an original, previously created first work (the underlying work). The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent in fo ...

. Changes and additions which do constitute a derivative work must be licensed under the same terms and conditions of the EPL, which includes the requirement to make

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

available. Linking to code (for example to a library) licensed under EPL automatically does not mean that your program is a derivative work. Eclipse Foundation interprets the term "derivative work" in a way that is consistent with the definition in the U.S. Copyright Act, as applicable to computer software.

Later versions

If a new version of the EPL is published the user/contributor can choose to distribute the software under the version with which he or she received it or upgrade to the new version.

Comparison with the CPL

The EPL was based on the Common Public License (CPL), but there are some differences between the two licenses: * The Eclipse Foundation replaces IBM as the Agreement Steward in the EPL * The EPL patent clause is revised by deleting the sentence from section 7 of the CPL The Eclipse Foundation sought permission from contributors to re-licence their CPL code under the EPL.

Version 2.0

Version2.0 of the Eclipse Public License ( SPDX code ) was announced on 24August 2017. The Eclipse Foundation maintains an FAQ. The FSF has analyzed the license in relation to

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

license compatibility and added it to their official list. The bare license notice is available in several formats, including plain text. In terms of GPL compatibility, the new license allows the initial contributor to a new project to

opt in OPT or Opt may refer for: Computing * /opt, a directory in the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard * Option key, a modifier key on Apple keyboards * Optimal page replacement algorithm, a page replacement algorithms for swapping out pages from memory ...

to a secondary license that provides explicit compatibility with the

version 2.0, or any later version. If this optional designation is absent, then the Eclipse license remains source incompatible with the GPL (any version). Other changes include: * the license now applies to "files" not "modules" * the new license is international because the

choice of law Choice of law is a procedural stage in the litigation of a case involving the conflict of laws when it is necessary to reconcile the differences between the laws of different legal jurisdictions, such as sovereign states, federated states (as in t ...

provision has been removed * the new license is suitable for scripting languages, including

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

The Eclipse Foundation advises that version1.0 is

deprecated In several fields, especially computing, deprecation is the discouragement of use of some terminology, feature, design, or practice, typically because it has been superseded or is no longer considered efficient or safe, without completely removing ...

and that projects should migrate to version2.0. Relicensing is a straightforward matter and does not require the consent of all contributors, past and present. Rather, the version1.0 license allows a project (preferably after forming a consensus) to adopt any new version by simply updating the relevant file headers and license notices.

Notable projects

In addition to the Eclipse Foundation, the EPL is used in some other projects, especially those running on the Java virtual machine.

Licensed solely under the EPL

* AT&T KornShell *

Clojure Clojure (, like ''closure'') is a dynamic and functional dialect of the Lisp programming language on the Java platform. Like other Lisp dialects, Clojure treats code as data and has a Lisp macro system. The current development process is comm ...

(and

ClojureScript Clojure (, like ''closure'') is a dynamic and functional dialect of the Lisp programming language on the Java platform. Like other Lisp dialects, Clojure treats code as data and has a Lisp macro system. The current development process is com ...

) *

Graphviz Graphviz (short for ''Graph Visualization Software'') is a package of open-source tools initiated by AT&T Labs Research for drawing graphs specified in DOT language scripts having the file name extension "gv". It also provides libraries for ...

Jikes RVM Jikes is an open-source Java compiler written in C++. It is no longer being updated. The original version was developed by David L. "Dave" Shields and Philippe Charles at IBM but was quickly transformed into an open-source project contribute ...

JUnit JUnit is a unit testing framework for the Java programming language. JUnit has been important in the development of test-driven development, and is one of a family of unit testing frameworks which is collectively known as xUnit that originated ...

* Mondrian *

OpenDaylight Project The OpenDaylight Project is a collaborative open-source project hosted by the Linux Foundation. The project serves as a platform for software-defined networking (SDN) for open, centralized, computer network device monitoring. History On Apr ...

UWIN UWIN is a computer software package created by David Korn which allows programs written for the operating system Unix to be built and run on Microsoft Windows with few, if any, changes. Some of the software development was subcontracted to Wipro ...

Multi-licensed under the EPL and one or more other licenses

Eclipse OMR
* Eclipse OpenJ9 *

Jetty A jetty is a structure that projects from land out into water. A jetty may serve as a breakwater, as a walkway, or both; or, in pairs, as a means of constricting a channel. The term derives from the French word ', "thrown", signifying some ...

JRuby JRuby is an implementation of the Ruby programming language atop the Java Virtual Machine, written largely in Java. It is free software released under a three-way EPL/GPL/ LGPL license. JRuby is tightly integrated with Java to allow the embeddin ...

References

External links

The Eclipse Public License, version 1.0

Eclipse Public License FAQ

EPL v1.0 on OSI

EPL v2.0 on OSI
{{FOSS Free and open-source software licenses Copyleft software licenses