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With a view that AspectJ code can be "borrowed" by other projects which would want to use a small amount of code or code snipets is it possible to add Eclipse Distribution License to AspectJ project.
This follows the discussion here: https://www.eclipse.org/lists/aspectj-dev/msg03304.html
I've spoken with Eclipse legal and this is really not trivial. Contacting everyone involved in commits to the codebase before now (including companies if the individuals worked for those companies when making the commits) to get permission to relicense is just not going to be possible (I'm informed adding EDL would be akin to the process described here https://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0/faq.php#h.tintzo3jnku1 for moving to EPL2). Are you absolutely sure what you want to do requires EDL? We could confirm that with legal.
I belive there are only 2 main contributors: - Andy Clement - Andrew Eisenberg
Also largest contributing organisation is: SpringSource/Pivotal
Also I guess the contributors have signed an ECA.
This will be somewhat difficult but not very ddifficult. 1st step would be to build a list of contributors and get the email addresses of the people who have commited and email them requesting permission to change license. Also see who one knows in the list and contact them. If one gets the responces then this would have been very easy. Generally for small projects with few contributors this will not be much of a problem. If one cannot contact a contributor one can try searching by name and approching them on social media. But this is will be for a small cross section of the contributors. I found the following contributors: - Sian January, IBM (https://github.com/sjanuary ???) - Helen Hawkins, IBM - Matt Chapman, IBM - Andrew Eisenberg, Pivotal/VMware/SpringSource (https://www.linkedin.com/in/aeisenberg/) - Kris De Volder, Pivotal/VMware/SpringSource (https://github.com/kdvolder) - Andy Clement, Pivotal/VMware/SpringSource (https://github.com/aclement) working at: - IBM - Pivotal/VMware/SpringSource if this might help.
I'd still like to understand what you can't do with the current license - are you sure you can't do it? I unfortunately have no time to pursue negotiating with all previous contributors. You are missing all the ones from Xerox PARC that originally created AspectJ (Eric, Jim, Ron, Wes, Mik, etc). And because we include Eclipse JDT would we also need to relicense our use of that? and if so contact all the contributors of Eclipse JDT. There are just so many things to dig into.
I mentioned it in the 1st comment: > With a view that AspectJ code can be "borrowed" by other projects which would want to use a small amount of code or code snipets. and int the mailing list discussion: > This is a great project to learn bytecode weaving but code snippets cannot directly used or changed be used due to the reciprocal nature of the license.
I guess I was trying to dig into the target location where you are copying it to - but sounds like you do not have the option for that to be EPL. Unfortunately, I can't see any change to adding EDL happening in the near term given the work involved.
