Re: FW: Ice GPL based Licensing

[Andrew Johnson <anj@aps.anl.gov>]

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.