| Re: [epl-discuss] Status of generated code regarding "Derivative Works" |
|
About the drawing program analogy : As an analogy, I don’t expect my office suite’s or drawing programme’s license to affect my writing or drawing. If there are templates involved, those licenses *might* come into play. But if you ever used a template that came with the office suite, did you bother reading through the EULA if it mentions how its licensed? (This isn’t a perfect analogy, but then again that’s how analogies work.) You don't expect the programme affecting your drawing license, but sometime it does. In case you use licensed additional filters or text font in Gimp, their license may affect your work whenever you use them. So I think the analogy is rather a good one. You don't expect the
generator's license to alter your generated code, but it may.
(And yes, I do read the EULA of any advanced Gimp filter or font
before using it...) I really don't think we could get an all black or white solution on this issue. Since somme generators may take a very slight configuration and produce licensed code (like example wizards), whereas some (like EMF) are clearly intended to be used only as a mean. We won't be able to draw the line. But at least, I think we could tell what the default behavior should be when no action is taken by developers. Experience shows that generator's developers won't bother to tell what is the behavior of their generator. Generally, they develop it with an open mind. So maybe the solution here is just :
I have no idea which of these points should appear in the faq or
in the license itself. But any solution which get us rid of
ambiguous situations looks fine to me.
And yes, I couldn't agree more, this point really might raise other questions about numerous similar use-cases (even advanced code-refactorers could be concerned).Doing so, I fear that by getting rid of one issue we’d open a Pandora’s box of all other similar questions, as the EPL is a license used for various tools, projects etc. in various settings. Then we’d either have to redraft the EPL-2.1 soon for adding new exceptions and reiterate that process regularly until we end up with a fairly long license. [...] … all that being said, if we can find a carefully-drafted generic solution in the wording of the license text itself, that doesn’t specifically mention code generators, but happens to also include them, I agree that would be a good solution. I have absolutely no idea how to formulate it in a generic way
that applies without doubt to code generators without mentioning
it. But it really makes sense in the definition of "Derivative
Works". Best regards,
|
