[Savannah-hackers] address@hidden: Re: [gnu.org #215181] GNU GPL plug-in for Eclipse]

[Sylvain Beucler]

Hello,

Soon after I approved your project, I was hit by a doubt regarding the
Eclipse licensing issue.

Unfortunately, the Eclipse Public License does not allow to write
GPL'd plugins. See the following mail from address@hidden

Until this issue is fixed, you have several choices:

- release the plugin under a license compatible with both the GNU GPL
  and the EPL (such as Expat or mBSD); in this case, please submit a
  distinct project at Savannah to make the license change clear.

- release the plugin under the EPL; in this case, as the license is
  incompatible with the GNU GPL, the project could not be hosted at
  Savannah.

So in all cases, the eclipse plug-in cannot be added to the cashew-s
project for now.

Please let me know your decision.

Apologize for the inconvenience, I should have spotted this during the
registration process.

-- 
Sylvain

----- Forwarded message from "address@hidden via RT" <address@hidden> -----

Subject: Re: [gnu.org #215181] GNU GPL plug-in for Eclipse
From: "address@hidden via RT" <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Cc: address@hidden,address@hidden
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 19:27:32 -0500

On Sun, 2004-11-21 at 08:20 -0500, Sylvain Beucler via RT wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I recently approved this project:
> https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/cashew-s
> 
> I told the user it was possible to write a plug-in for Eclipse (under
> the Eclipse Public License) and release it under the GNU GPL using an
> exception as described at
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPluginsInNF
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs
> 
> My approval is here:
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/savannah-hackers/2004-11/msg00550.html
> 
> However, I now wonder whether such linking is possible.
> 
> Let's consider an hypothetical license "anti-GPL" that permits any
> kind of use except combinaison with GNU GPL'd program. If I release a
> GPL'd plug-in for a piece of software released under the anti-GPL,
> adding an exception to my plug-in will not be enough to combine the
> two programs.
> 
> So my questions are:
> - Is using an exception enough to combine any GPL-incompatible
>   software with GPL'd software?
> - If not, is it possible to release an GPL'd plug-in for Eclipse?

The Eclipse people don't believe that plug-ins are derivative works of
the main program.  We do.  So, they think they permit this, and we think
they don't.  To make this clear, I'm talking to them about getting an
explicit exception in place to allow this.   

Until then, we think such linking violates their license.

-- 
-Dave Turner
GPL Compliance Engineer
Support my work: http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=novalis&p=FSF
----- End forwarded message -----