gnu-misc-discuss
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Questions about a special exception to the GPL


From: Tassilo Horn
Subject: Questions about a special exception to the GPL
Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 10:16:00 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.50 (gnu/linux)

Hi,

I have a licensing question.  We have a java framework for model-driven
development [1].  That framework is currently licensed as "GPLv2 or
later".  In the last few years, we've encountered some difficulties with
this licensing choice, because we face more and more needs to use that
framework in applications built on the Eclipse platform, which uses the
free but incompatible EPL license.

So we are thinking about upgrading to GPLv3 (or later) with a custom
exception, which might be like that:

  Linking this library statically or dynamically with other modules is
  making a combined work based on this library.  Thus, the terms and
  conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the whole
  combination.

  As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give you
  permission to release your combined work using this library under any
  free software license listed at

      http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

  no matter if GPL-compatible or GPL-incompatible, unless you apply
  modifications to the library's source code itself.

Does that make sense?

And there's another caveat I'm not sure how to handle correctly.  The
framework contains a code generator which given user-specified metamodel
(a data model description) generates java code implementing that data
model by specializing core classes from the library.  Therefore, the
generated code depends on the availability of the library itself.  In
the generated code, there are no copyright notices, and the special
exception should also apply if the generated code is modified or
extended.

Should I add something along the lines of

  Modifications to code generated by the library are explicitly allowed
  by the special exception.

to the exception text?

Bye,
Tassilo
__________
[1] http://jgralab.uni-koblenz.de




reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]