[GRASS-dev] Compatibility of GPL v.2/3 and EUPL v1.2 licenses

[Vaclav Petras]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 7:49 AM Nikos Alexandris <nik at nikosalexandris.net>
wrote:

>
> Does the "at arm's length" case apply for GRASS GIS and GRASS GIS
> addons? Do GRASS GIS core and GRASS GIS addons considered to operate as
> one?
>

Please note that there is a difference between creating a custom GRASS GIS
module and contributing that module to GRASS GIS Addons repository. For
"addons" we, at least currently, require 100% compatibility with the
"core", i.e. GPL >=2 (SPDX: GPL-2.0-or-later), to be able to move code
freely between these two (without even a need to think about the license at
that point and being on the safe site when distributing everything).

https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/RFC/2_LegalAspectsOfCodeContributions


>
> If yes,
>
> 1. this would mean that the GPL and the EUPL cannot be combined, in
> the case of GRASS GIS addons.
>

I agree with Moritz that this would be best answered by those would created
EUPL (i.e. some "open source office" in European Commission) or
alternatively by Free Software Foundation Europe (https://fsfe.org/).


>
> 2. would the GRASS GIS team consider to add a similar "compatibility
> clause" to effectively make both licenses 100% cross-compatible?
>


This would count as changing the license. Changing the license would mean
getting approval from all past contributors which would be very hard, close
to impossible. (Changing to a later version of GPL is of course a different
story because of the "or later" part.)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/attachments/20181022/75d4be17/attachment.html>