Eclipse Public License 2.0
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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 had been the most popular IDE for Java development until 20 ...
and other projects by the
Eclipse Foundation The Eclipse Foundation AISBL is an independent, Europe-based not-for-profit organization that acts as a steward of the Eclipse open source software development community, with legal jurisdiction in the European Union. It is an organization supp ...
. It replaces the
Common Public License In computing, the Common Public License (CPL) is a free software / open-source software license published by IBM. The Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative have approved the license terms of the CPL. Definition The CPL has the stat ...
(CPL) and removes certain terms relating to
litigation A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties (the plaintiff or claimant) against one or more parties (the defendant) in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. ...
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 sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...
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 Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...
(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)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports 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 a California public benefit corporation "actively involved in Open Source community-building, education, and public advocacy to promote awareness and the importance of non-proprietary software". Governance The ...
(OSI). Discussion of a new version of the EPL began in May 2013. Version2.0 was announced on 24August 2017. On 20 January 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 systems can understand data generated by older ones * Compatibility card, an expansion card for hardware emulation of another device * Compatibility layer, component ...
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 workthat ... 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, Bru ...
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 software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing the software or modi ...
, 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 a first, previously created original work (the underlying work). The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent from ...
. 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 or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...
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 In computing, the Common Public License (CPL) is a free software / open-source software license published by IBM. The Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative have approved the license terms of the CPL. Definition The CPL has the stat ...
(CPL), but there are some differences between the two licenses: * The Eclipse Foundation replaces
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
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 System Package Data Exchange (SPDX, formerly Software Package Data Exchange) is an open standard capable of representing systems with digital components as bills of materials (BOMs). First designed to describe software components, SPDX can descr ...
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 Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first c ...
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 to a secondary license that provides explicit compatibility with the
GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...
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
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 ...
provision has been removed * the new license is suitable for scripting languages, including
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...
The Eclipse Foundation advises that version1.0 is
deprecated Deprecation is the discouragement of use of something human-made, such as a term, feature, design, or practice. Typically something is deprecated because it is claimed to be inferior compared to other options available. Something may be deprec ...
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 A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally descr ...
.


Licensed solely under the EPL

* AT&T KornShell *
Clojure Clojure (, like ''closure'') is a dynamic programming language, dynamic and functional programming, functional dialect (computing), dialect of the programming language Lisp (programming language), Lisp on the Java (software platform), Java platfo ...
(and
ClojureScript Clojure (, like ''closure'') is a dynamic and functional dialect of the programming language Lisp on the Java platform. Like most other Lisps, Clojure's syntax is built on S-expressions that are first parsed into data structures by a Lisp re ...
) *
Graphviz Graphviz (short for ''Graph Visualization Software'') is a package of open-source software, open-source tools initiated by AT&T Labs, AT&T Labs Research for Graph drawing, drawing graph (discrete mathematics), graphs (as in Vertex (graph theory ...
*
Jikes RVM Jikes Research Virtual Machine (Jikes RVM) is a mature virtual machine that runs programs written for the Java platform. Unlike most other Java virtual machines (JVMs), it is written in the programming language Java, in a style of implementation ...
*
JUnit JUnit is a test automation framework for the Java programming language. JUnit is often used for unit testing, and is one of the xUnit frameworks. JUnit is linked as a JAR at compile-time. The latest version of the framework, JUnit 5, resides ...
* Mondrian * OpenDaylight Project *
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 Wi ...


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


Eclipse OMR
* Eclipse OpenJ9 *
Jetty A jetty is a man-made structure that protrudes from land out into water. A jetty may serve as a breakwater (structure), breakwater, as a walkway, or both; or, in pairs, as a means of constricting a channel. The term derives from the French la ...
*
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 embeddi ...


See also

* Software using the Eclipse Public License (category)


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