Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Carlos Pascual <[email protected]> · Mon, 09 Jul 2018 12:48:10 +0200

Hi, 

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Also, I am not an 
EPICS developer

That said, by reading the EOL I do not find any reason to believe it not being 
GPL-compatible.

In fact, the only part that I had my doubts with was EOL's section 4c, but 
doing a bit of research, I found that it is equivalent to similar clauses in 
other officially GPL-compatible licenses [1] (see e.g. clause 4b of the 
Apache2.0 license [2]).

In any case, I think it would be nice to actually submit the question to [3]

Cheers,

Carlos

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.htm
[2] http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:Apache2.0
[3] [email protected]

On Sunday, July 8, 2018 8:31:08 PM CEST Johnson, Andrew N. wrote:
> Hi Gabriel,
> 
> Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
> 
> Most EPICS software is distributed as source code, rarely as binaries (there
> are binary packages available for Debian Linux but they should have source
> packages available too, and I’m not really talking about them here). The
> EPICS Open License (EOL) does permit binary distribution with certain
> conditions though, so some companies sell products including binary
> versions of the EPICS core code and this is legally fine as long as they
> follow those conditions.

> The question of compatibility between the EOL and the GPL isn’t something we
> have asked for legal advice over, but I don’t personally have any
> objections to projects using the GPL, and I think that would be true for
> all of the current core developers. If there is a legal incompatibility the
> act of distributing as source code instead of binaries would also prevent
> problems, because the end-user is the one combining the code and the GPL
> conditions are only triggered by the act of distribution.

> I hope this helps, but I don’t think anyone could give you a definitive
> answer.

> - Andrew
> 
> -- 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
> 
> > On Jul 6, 2018, at 7:38 AM, Gabriel de Souza Fedel <[email protected]>
> > wrote:

> > Hi,
> > 
> > Someone knows if is it possible (legal) create a project using epics and
> > share this project with GPL license?

> > I found an old post (from 2001) saying that is not possible, but I found
> > some projects using EPICS and with GPL license.

> > Thank you,
> > 
> > Regards
> > 
> > -- 
> > Gabriel Fedel
> > Software de Operação das Linhas de Luz
> > Laboratório Nacional de Luz Síncrotron – (LNLS)
> > Centro Nacional de Pesquisa em Energia e Materiais (CNPEM)
> > [email protected] | +55 (19) 3512 1226
> > www.lnls.cnpem.br

-- 
+----------------------------------------------------+
 Carlos Pascual Izarra
 Scientific Software Coordinator
 Computing Division
 ALBA Synchrotron  [http://www.albasynchrotron.es]
 Carrer de la Llum 2-26
 E-08290 Cerdanyola del Valles (Barcelona), Spain
 E-mail: [email protected]
 Phone: +34 93 592 4428
+----------------------------------------------------+

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System