On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 05:10:45PM -0400, Wheeler, David A wrote: > However, 2(e) makes me wonder: > > e) Notwithstanding the terms of any Secondary License, no Contributor makes > > additional grants to any Recipient (other than those set forth in this > > Agreement) as a result of such Recipient's receipt of the Program under the > > terms of a Secondary License (if permitted under the terms of Section 3). > > It's not clear to me that this EPL-2.0 clause adds a conflict with GPL-2.0 or > GPL-3.0. For argument's sake I'll assume it doesn't, in part because I > expect that the EPL-2.0 drafters would have noticed this. However, there's a > weirdness: This text seems to add a constraint that a *future* version of the > GPL might conceivably conflict with. My crystal ball is murky today :-).
I can shed some light on some of the deeper origins of this text. In 2007, GPLv3 added the following language to the GPL license updatability provision: Later license versions may give you additional or different permissions. However, no additional obligations are imposed on any author or copyright holder as a result of your choosing to follow a later version. Although of course this does not by its terms relate to GPLv2, it was intended primarily to make the point that if someone upgraded GPLv2-or-later code to GPLv3, this would not somehow mean that an upstream licensor would suddenly be held to have granted (or have an obligation to grant) some permission present in GPLv3 but not in GPLv2 (for example, some particular aspect of the GPLv3 express patent license grant). (The language thus originated as an effort to mollify intellectual property lawyers who had irrational fears around open source licensing.) I am fairly sure that this language influenced MPL 2.0 section 2.4: No Contributor makes additional grants as a result of Your choice to distribute the Covered Software under a subsequent version of this License (see Section 10.2) or under the terms of a Secondary License (if permitted under the terms of Section 3.3). Notice that the MPL GPL-family copyleft escape hatch feature is being treated the same way as a future version of the MPL, for purposes of that provision. EPL 2.0 adapted that language in 2(e): Notwithstanding the terms of any Secondary License, no Contributor makes additional grants to any Recipient (other than those set forth in this Agreement) as a result of such Recipient's receipt of the Program under the terms of a Secondary License (if permitted under the terms of Section 3). In light of the history I would like to take 2(e) just to be saying that, for example: - A puts some code under EPL 2.0 with a Secondary License notice that references GPLv3 (which might or might not be correctly describable as 'EPL-2.0 OR GPL-3.0') - A also owns a patent with a claim that reads on some GPL-3.0 code created by B - C takes A's code and combines it with B's code - Even if A's code was 'EPL-2.0 OR GPL-3.0', A did not grant a GPLv3 section 11 patent license covering its patent which reads on B's code (cf. GPLv3: licensed patent claims "do not include claims that would be infringed only as a consequence of further modification of the contributor version") I do think this is a somewhat tortured reading though and the torturedness all seems to stem from that language in Exhibit A. > If my understanding is correct (and it might not be), then "(EPL-2.0 OR > GPL-2.0+)" is *NOT* correct, because you can't necessarily just use arbitrary > later versions of the GPL after 2.0 and ignore the EPL-2.0 text. I think the issue is simpler. Exhibit A should probably not have said: "This Source Code is also Distributed under one or more Secondary Licenses ..." because I think the intention was something more like "This Source Code may [at some point in the future from the perspective of me, the initial Contributor] also be Distributed under one or more Secondary Licenses, under the circumstances described in section 3.2..." (That supports the view that a simple OR expression is not truly the right way to describe what's going on here.) cc'ing Mike Milinkovich so he is aware of this. Richard _______________________________________________ Spdx-legal mailing list Spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org https://lists.spdx.org/mailman/listinfo/spdx-legal
