Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Can we licence our Clojure (Eclipse Public License 1.0) project with the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE?

[Aspasia Beneti]

Aspasia Beneti <address@hidden> wrote ..
> and will be secured from been used for commercial purposes

I'm not entirely certain what you mean by this but I wanted to point
out a part from the Free Software Definition [0]:

"'Free software' does not mean 'noncommercial'. A free program must be
available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial
distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer
unusual; such free commercial software is very important. You may have
paid money to get copies of free software, or you may have obtained
copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you
always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell
copies."

I recommend reading the entire Free Software Definition along with
Selling Free Software [1].

Depending on what exactly you mean by the programing being "secured"
from commercial use, it may mean that it doesn't qualify as free
software to begin with.

On the other hand, if you mean 'commercial' as a synonym for
'non-free' or 'proprietary' then I'd like to point you to [2].
>> I meant proprietary and/or non-free. Excuse my lack of terminology and 
>> thanks for the links.

> However it was brought to our attention that GPL and EPL are
> incompatible (are they?)

Yes, the FSF has it in its list of GPL-Incompatible Free Software
Licenses [3]. Plus, there's also [4].
>> Yes I saw this. However I have seen Clojure projects licensed under AGPL and 
>> I have seen discussions over exceptions etc. My understanding so far is that 
>> it is a bit of a grey area in practice.

> Do you have any advice on what is the best way to go in our case?

There was a discussion on a new version of the EPL [5] but it seems to
have stalled. Regardless it would be good to help raise GPL
compatibility as something to be addressed in the next version of the EPL.

Until/less that happens perhaps some sort of exception is appropriate?
It may be best to contact address@hidden for help with such a thing
because it can be hard to get them "just right.”
>> Not sure who you mean I should contact. We are planning to get some legal 
>> advice at the end but I would like to understand how the community sees it 
>> before.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
[2] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Commercial
[3] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#EPL
[4] https://eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php#GPLCOMPATIBLE
[5]
https://mmilinkov.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/community-review-of-the-eclipse-public-license/

Aspasia Beneti aka aspra
Dyne.org Think & Do tank
Lead software developer of the Freecoin toolkit
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