Bug#551861: [eclim-user] Fwd: Re: RFP: eclim -- Integration between the eclipse IDE and the VIM text editor
On 2010-10-12 07:44:45, Niels Thykier wrote:
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> On 2010-10-11 16:18, Eric Van Dewoestine wrote:
> > [...]
> >
>
> Hi
>
> > Note, the expected "I'm not a lawyer" applies to my interpretation of
> > these licenses:
> >
>
> Yupe, me neither. Trust me, legal stuff is among my least favourite
> parts of packaging software for Debian. Nevertheless it is a requirement
> for distributing it in Debian, so...
>
> > GPL and EPL are not compatible, but the GPL3 has the following
> > exception:
> >
> > http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs
> >
> > "If you want your program to link against a library not covered by the
> > system library exception, you need to provide permission to do that.
> >
> > ...
> >
> > Only the copyright holders for the program can legally release their
> > software under these terms. If you wrote the whole program yourself,
> > then assuming your employer or school does not claim the copyright,
> > you are the copyright holder—so you can authorize the exception."
> >
> >
> > The EPL also has has different interpretation of a "derivative work"
> > allowing eclipse plugins to not automatically need to be licensed
> > under the EPL:
> >
> > http://www.eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php#DERIV
> >
> > 26. Some free software communities say that linking to their code
> > automatically means that your program is a derivative work. Is
> > this the position of the Eclipse Foundation?
> >
> > No, the 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. Therefore,
> > linking to Eclipse code might or might not create a derivative
> > work, depending on all of the other facts and circumstances.
> >
> > 27. I‘m a programmer not a lawyer, can you give me a clear cut example
> > of when something is or is not a derivative work?
> >
> > If you have made a copy of existing Eclipse code and made a few
> > minor revisions to it, that is a derivative work. If you've
> > written your own Eclipse plug-in with 100% your own code to
> > implement functionality not currently in Eclipse, then it is not a
> > derivative work. Scenarios between those two extremes will require
> > you to seek the advice of your own legal counsel in deciding
> > whether your program constitutes a derivative work.
> >
> > For clarity, merely interfacing or interoperating with Eclipse
> > plug-in APIs (without modification) does not make an Eclipse
> > plug-in a derivative work.
> >
>
> I vaguely recall the "not required to use EPL for a plugin" thing, but
> FSF insists that GPL for a plugin is a violation of the GPL unless there
> is "extra permissions"[1].
Which is what's included in my NOTICE file.
> >
> > You can also read the eclim NOTICE file where I attempt to comply with
> > requirements of the licenses of software utilized by eclim:
> >
> > http://github.com/ervandew/eclim/blob/master/NOTICE
> >
>
> Sweet... However your notice file makes me wonder if vimplugin has this
> exception. I did a short check of their SVN but I did not find something
> that suggest this, so all files from the vimplugin cannot be covered by
> your exception unless you have the permission of the copyright holders
> of the vimplugin.
Valid point. Although vimplugin has no other purpose than to be
linked with eclipse, I don't recall them explicitly granting that
permission like I have. I'll see if I can contact them regarding this
issue, though this could be difficult since I haven't seen any of the
devs respond on their mailing list in, well, years.
> If you have said permission, you probably want to clarify that in your
> NOTICE file.
>
> Likewise, if eclim links against other plugins/libraries, if they are
> GPL'ed these plugins/libraries must both be compatible with GPL v3 and
> EPL at the same time (namely if they are GPL'ed they must have the extra
> permission like eclim has).
>
> Then there is the part:
>
> Permission is granted to link this work with:
> - Eclipse (cdt, jdt, pdt, wst, and any other eclipse extension produced by
> the Eclipse Foundation under the terms of the EPL).
>
> Which implies that if a EPL'ed plugin, which is not produced by the
> Eclipse Foundation, is loaded side by side with the eclim plugin then
> your license will be violated. As an example the CMakeBuilder plugin is
> EPL'ed but not developed by the Eclipse Foundation. It is my guess that
> FSF will consider it a violation of your license in this case.
> That being said, this is only a problem if the resulting combination
> is distributed (the GPL allows you to do pretty much anything with an
> in-house copy of the licensed work). But as I read this, it effectively
> prevents anyone outside of the Eclipse Foundation to derive from your
> work or use (parts of) it as a library for their eclipse plugin.
Yes, that should prevent bundles like aptana and myeclipse from
bundling eclim as part of their eclipse distributions, but I don't
mean to prevent eclim from being install along side other plugins with
conflicting licenses. Perhaps altering my NOTICE a bit would help
with your concerns, like removing the "Permission is granted.." block
and simply rolling some of that info into the gpl exception as
follows:
If you modify this Program, or any covered work, by linking or
combining it with Eclipse (cdt, jdt, pdt, wst, and any other eclipse
extension produced by the Eclipse Foundation), containing parts
covered by the terms of the EPL, the licensors of this Program grant
you additional permission to convey the resulting work.
That should hopefully make it more clear that this is intended to
cover distribution and is not intended to restrict what the user can
link eclim with in their personal install, so long as they don't
distribute the result of course. Is that enough to permit debian to
redistribute eclim as a distinct package (excluding the vimplugin
exception yet to be dealt with)?
> Yes, I am being pedantic here. Unfortunately legal things tend to be
> this at least in some countries. Also I am not the one who has to
> approve the license of your project for distribution in Debian, but
> these people expect me to do my homework first...
Totally understood and I'm certainly open to making changes to ease
debian's and other's ability to distributed eclim.
> I also have my reservations about packaging an embedded version of
> vimplugin with eclim. Optimally your changes could be merged into
> vimplugin itself.
> But then again, if the upstream of vimplugin is no longer active, this
> is usually not a problem as long embedding vimplugin does not become a
> "fashion".
Yeah I'd love to push all my changes upstream but unfortunately the
vimplugin project is pretty much dead as far as I can tell. I highly
doubt that embedding vimplugin would become a "fashion" since
embedding vim is such a niche, and when not combined with eclim, I
hardly see the point, especially with plugins like vrapper out there
that add vi/vim key bindings to the existing eclipse editors.
>
> > --
> > eric
> >
>
> ~Niels
>
> [1] http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/using-the-gpl-for-eclipse-plug-ins
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--
eric
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