Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Gabriel de Souza Fedel <[email protected]> · Wed, 11 Jul 2018 08:06:28 -0300

Hello Carlos,

Thank you for the answer.

On 09-07-2018 07:48, Carlos Pascual wrote:

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]).

I was thinking clauses 3 and  5 could be a problem.

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

Yes, it is a good idea, I will send a mail for them.

Cheers,

Carlos

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

thank you again,

Regards,

Gabriel

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

--
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

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System