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Subject: Re: FW: Ice GPL based Licensing
From: Andrew Johnson <[email protected]>
To: Jeff Hill <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 16:18:22 -0500
IMHO the GPL will only become a problem for EPICS if we include code that is licensed under it into the EPICS source that we distribute, at which point we *would* have to license EPICS under the GPL or at least explicitly dual-license it.

I don't know whether the EPICS license conflicts with the GPL or not, we'd have to get a lawyer involved to answer that question (although to my non-legal eye I don't see anything that would make the two incompatible). If it doesn't then relicensing or dual-licensing EPICS under the GPL would be relatively simple; if it's not, we'd have to see whether the wording of the Grant of Licenses that we have from all contributors (other than APS and ANL) would permit us to relicense without additional permission, which I suspect it does.

However my main point is that as long as we distribute only our own source code, and we don't pull any GPL source code into what we distribute, then we're not breaking anyone else's license conditions. The combination of the ICE code and EPICS code would only happen at the end user site where the two get compiled and linked together, and the resulting binaries aren't usually distributed anyway.

Yes, there would be a problem for any commercial company selling something that includes EPICS+ICE binaries, but they're the one who would have to buy the commercial license for ICE, not us.

Note that John Sinclair is working on a QT-based version of EDM, and he has exactly the same problem since he's linking GPL'd Qt code against EPICS CA. However as long as he distributes EDM as source code this isn't a problem at all and he doesn't need to worry about the compatibility of the EPICS license with the GPL.

- Andrew
--
English probably arose from Normans trying to pick up Saxon girls.

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RE: FW: Ice GPL based Licensing Jeff Hill
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FW: Ice GPL based Licensing Jeff Hill

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