Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Jeff Hill" <[email protected]> · Tue, 18 Oct 2005 13:04:04 -0600

Hi,

I have been reading some more about ICE. I am certainly no expert on
licensing issues so perhaps someone can clarify the following questions.

I read the attached text about how the ICE license is based on the GPL. In
particular, I noticed their comment that "you can only distribute your
application if all of its dependencies also have a license that is
compatible with the GPL". I think that I heard that the EPICS license isn't
strictly compatible with the GPL because work completed under US federal
employment is in the public domain (is copyright free) but the GPL is
copyright based? It appears that ZeroC has to grant a release to link with
each non GPL package such as EPICS, and there appears to be a strong
probability that $$$ would be a prerequisite. Should we be concerned about
that?

Assuming that the EPICS license *was* compatible with the GPL another point
to consider would be that any EPICS distribution based on ICE could not be
dependent on a non-GPL component nor could it be embedded in any commercial
product including non-GPL (proprietary) components unless license fees were
individually negotiated with ZeroC. Should we be concerned about
restrictions of this type?

Jeff

Ice is released as open source under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
By linking with Ice (directly or indirectly, statically or dynamically, at
compile time or runtime), your application is subject to the terms of the
GPL, which require that you release the source code of your application if
and when you "distribute" it. Distributing an application includes giving it
to customers, contractors, parent companies, subsidiaries, or any legal
entity other than your own. Also note that the GPL does not permit you to
distribute your application if it depends on non-free software (other than
common operating system components), meaning that you can only distribute
your application if all of its dependencies also have a license that is
compatible with the GPL. Please read the GPL FAQ for more information.

If you do not wish to be bound by the terms of the GPL, you can acquire a
commercial license from ZeroC. We are flexible with respect to licensing,
and will always try to find a licensing model that both works for our
customers and gives us a fair share for our Ice software.

One of our licensing models is a license fee that is based on your
organization's overall gross annual revenue of all products that use Ice. Of
course, this model is only appropriate for Ice software products that are
not bundled with other software or with hardware. We therefore also offer
other models, including per-CPU licensing fees, fixed annual fees, and
one-time buy-outs. Please contact us to discuss your licensing requirements.

Note that our commercial licenses for Ice include a commercial license for
Berkeley DB Transactional Store from Sleepycat Software, which is required
by certain Ice components.

__________________________________________________________
Jeffrey O. Hill               Mail         [email protected]
LANL MS H820                  Voice        505 665 1831
Los Alamos NM 87545 USA       Fax          505 665 5107

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System