| [cdt-dev] Eclipse Public License (EPL) transition |
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Hi folks, Below is a forwarded email from Kathleen Barry (from Eclipse.org) on
the CPL to EPL transition. All committers and contributors, please read
carefully. In a nutshell, here’s what’s happening: -
Eclipse and subprojects are moving
licenses to the EPL. From now until sometime in 2005, all projects will be
released under both licenses. -
All contributors to our current
source base need to give their agreement to re-license their contribution under
the EPL -
For contributions from Eclipse
member companies (where people have submitted code as part of their work), the
companies have agreed to re-license the code already. Examples of this are
contributions by IBM, QNX, Intel, etc -
For contributions from individual,
these will have to be contacted (which Eclipse is going to do) and will have to
give permission on re-licensing the code they submitted. In the case of CDT, we
have no individual committers, but have had individual contributors who have
submitted patches that fall in this category. -
I need to collect the list of
committers and contributors, along with their contact info and area of contribution.
I probably have enough info for the QNX and IBM contributors; for other
companies, I had started a list a few months ago but it will have to be updated
and completed. This is where I will need people’s help. -
Finally, we will have to start
collecting more info on contributors when patches are submitted (beyond the
patch submissions and emails). We have asked Eclipse to provide infrastructure
to do this (e.g. a common database), but from the email below, it looks like
this mechanism is still at the requirements stage. Therefore, we probably want
to create an easy to update list (maybe in CVS?) of contributors. I will do a first pass at collecting the info on committers and
contributors and will circulate it on the dev list for review. For those
companies other than QNX and IBM that are monitoring the mailing list – it
would be helpful if you could have someone drop me an email with a recap of
your known contributions, along with their contact info (name, email, address,
phone #). Thanks to all, Sebastien ======================= forwarded email
================================== As you may be aware, the Eclipse Foundation is currently transitioning
from the Common Public License (CPL) to the Eclipse Public License (EPL).
Please consult the FAQ for an explanation of the reasons for this change and
more detail on what the move will entail (http://www.eclipse.org/legal/main.html). As part of this process, the Eclipse Board has decided that current
releases of all Eclipse.org projects, as well as any subsequent maintenance
updates, will continue to be licensed under the CPL but will also be
re-licensed under the EPL. In other words, the content distributed by
such development streams will be dual-licensed under both CPL and EPL and
recipients can choose the license they wish to apply. This policy is
designed to offer maximum flexibility to downstream users of Eclipse
technology, and ensure that there is a smooth transition from CPL to EPL
licensing. If you believe this approach is problematic for your project,
please contact Executive Director Mike Milinkovich (mike.milinkovicg@xxxxxxxxxxx)
to obtain an exception from the policy. Every project is important to the
Eclipse community, and the Eclipse management team wants to work with you and
the PMC to ensure that application of Eclipse Foundations policies is sensible,
fair and equitable. The re-licensing process will require that, for a period of time, all
inbound contributions be submitted under both CPL and EPL. The web site
Terms of Use will be updated to reflect this change, and all contributors to
the current release streams are being contacted to obtain their permission to
re-license their contributions. Once the re-licensing process is complete
(expected to be some time in 2005), all new inbound contributions for future
releases will be licensed solely under the EPL, and the releases themselves
will under EPL only. Previous release streams licensed under CPL (e.g.
Eclipse 2.x) will continue to be governed by the CPL only. As noted, the Eclipse Foundation must ensure that all authors of
contributions, including both committers and non-committer contributors, agree
to re-license their work under the EPL. For those individuals whose
contribution was made in the regular course of their employment by an Eclipse
Member Organization, their respective employer has or will give consent on their
behalf. However, individual contributors, including committers who are working
on Eclipse.org projects as individuals (i.e. not in the course of their regular
employment), will need to personally agree to this re-licensing. This is
where the Eclipse Foundation urgently needs your help. As a subproject
lead, you are the principal contact point for the committers and contributors
on your project. We are asking that you forward this message to all committers
on your project, asking them to identify any non-committer contributors whose
contributions they may have committed. We also need to know whether each
committer is acting as an individual or for their employer, and who that
employer is in the latter case. If you could coordinate a single response,
we would be appreciative as this would help off-load Eclipse Foundation
staff. If this is not possible, then please ask the committers to reply
directly to Kathleen Barry (kathleen@xxxxxxxxxxx). It is very important that our list be complete. If a committer is
unsure as to whether to submit a particular contributor name, please send it to
us anyway along with a short description of the circumstances. We will
work with you to ascertain whether this person needs to be contacted. Once we have obtained this information we will be contacting employers,
individual committers and contributors as appropriate to obtain their agreement
to re-license their contributions in the current release under the EPL. You should also be mindful of the need to keep careful record of all
contributions on an ongoing basis (including those authored by yourself and
those by non-committer contributors) as detailed in the Due Diligence
Guidelines for Eclipse.org Committers under the heading “Tracking
Contributions”. It is important to read this document if you have
not already. It can be found at http://www.eclipse.org/legal/committerguidelines.html.
At some point in the future, we may institute a universally accessible database
to track contributions. To aid in this process, it would be very
helpful if you could indicate whether and how you are collecting and
documenting this information now. For your convenience we have summarized our questions: 1. Please provide a current list of committers, their contact
information, noting any case where the committer is contributing as an
individual. At a minimum contact data should include email address and
employer; regular mail address, phone/fax, etc. would be helpful is
available. Eclipse will treat this information carefully and will only
retain it with consent from the individual. 2. Please list the names and contact information of all non-committer
contributors as well as any other pertinent information, especially which
modules they worked on and approximately how much code they contributed. 3. How are you currently collecting and storing contact information
with regard to non-committer contributors? 4. Is any committer aware of any existing patents relating to his/her
contributions or to contributions he/she has committed? Thank you very much for your assistance. The success of Eclipse has
been due largely to the contributions of you and your colleagues. We want
you to know that we value your participation and trust that we can count on
your continued support. Yours truly, Mike Milinkovich Please direct replies to Kathleen Barry kathleen@xxxxxxxxxxx |