Thank you all for the responses. There are clearly different sides
to this, each with their benefits and justifications.
The consideration from Mike below clearly shows the added value of
the current EPL towards the users of open source software.
I guess this thread/issue is about the impact on the side of the
open-source software providers, if my basic grasp of things
is correct. Non-profit institutions or small companies often just
want to contribute work to the open source community because it's
the right thing to do and/or to grow a community to ensure the
long-term viability of the work. Often they don't have the resources
to support the risk of ending up in complex patent-law
investigations. And it's a pity if this might lead to less
contributions.
For now my feeling is : the EPL has proven its usefulness in several
contexts already, so let's see how far we can grow the IWG by
offering great frameworks and tools for the scientific community!
cheers
erwin
Op 17/02/2016 om 03:42 schreef Jay Jay
Billings:
Mike,
Personally, I agree with you and if I was running a
company I wouldn't care about it. I'm just relaying what I've
encountered in the field. Ultimately I think we just need to
educate people about it better.
Jay
On Feb 16, 2016 18:08, "Mike Milinkovich"
< mike.milinkovich@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
To be truly open source, code needs to be usable without
requiring further permissions, including spending money
acquiring patent licenses. As someone who has been a
member of the board at the Open Source Initiative for many
years, I can tell you that these sorts of patent clauses
are considered to be a feature of all modern open
source licenses. The patent clauses in the EPL, ALv2 and
similar licenses have been carefully constructed, and are
broadly accepted by industry. The ALv2 in particular is
very popular precisely because of its patent license
(which is almost identical to the EPL's), coupled with
permissive copyright terms.
On 2/16/2016 3:56 PM, Jay Jay Billings wrote:
Well, in fairness, I hear complaints from
nonmembers about the patent clause in the EPL all the
time. Our attorney at ORNL wrestled with it for awhile
before he was comfortable with it too. In the end he
decided it was fine.
UCB had previously objected to a request from
someone on my team on ground of the EPL patent clause,
so I think they just really don't like it.
Jay
On Feb 16, 2016 3:35 PM, "Mike
Milinkovich" < mike.milinkovich@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 2/16/2016 2:35 PM, Erwin de Ley wrote:
From the analysis by
Christopher below, it would seem that a rather
small addition/modification in the standard EPL
could enable academic/research institutions to
actively participate in Eclipse open-source
projects. Whereas the current EPL patent clause
seems to prohibit that.
Changing open source license terms is an extremely
time-consuming and difficult thing to do. However,
for those who are interested in such things there
are on-going (but currently dormant) discussions
about revising the EPL at epl-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxx
Personally I don't
understand such legal details, but the issue
encountered for UC Berkeley is probably widely
applicable to many more US institutions (and
European ones as well I guess). And it would seem
that the Science IWG is specifically impacted by
this as we're targeting research/academic
instutions a.o.
UC Berkley is the first institution in 12 years to
raise these concerns. I would not rush to any
assumptions about their conclusions.
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