In the last 28 years of publishing software, I’ve had three distinct eras of software licensing. All of my recent stuff is available under the European Union Public License 1.2, and I thought to explain why.
Hmmh. Sure, cross-licensing is an entirely different topic. That’s not really what we’re afraid of when for example Amazon takes some Free Software and provides it as a service. It’s just that the EUPL comes with an automatic cross-licensing option regarding the distribution of combined works.
But I must say, I’m still confused. What’s an “essential functionality” now? Is that supposed to be a legal term? And where are the blurry lines with that? What if I offer a hosting service that heavily relies on database operations, but doesn’t expose the database itself… it’s slightly abstracted away from the customer? It’s internally 85% made up of some other person’s work, but it builds upon that Free Software and doesn’t straight provide access to it’s functionalities… Is that alright? And why (not)? And why restrict it to essential functionality? Can we just take optional functionality? And specifics, like if a database is really good at something, but that’s not essential to a database project?
And I still don’t see the “stronger terms prevail”. That’s not how that sentence goes. It’s very specific in: if it’s an obligation (to the licensee, btw), then the other license prevails. Not the stronger one, the other one wins any conflict. It’s just concerned with the distribution of combined works, though.
Hmmh. Sure, cross-licensing is an entirely different topic. That’s not really what we’re afraid of when for example Amazon takes some Free Software and provides it as a service. It’s just that the EUPL comes with an automatic cross-licensing option regarding the distribution of combined works.
But I must say, I’m still confused. What’s an “essential functionality” now? Is that supposed to be a legal term? And where are the blurry lines with that? What if I offer a hosting service that heavily relies on database operations, but doesn’t expose the database itself… it’s slightly abstracted away from the customer? It’s internally 85% made up of some other person’s work, but it builds upon that Free Software and doesn’t straight provide access to it’s functionalities… Is that alright? And why (not)? And why restrict it to essential functionality? Can we just take optional functionality? And specifics, like if a database is really good at something, but that’s not essential to a database project?
And I still don’t see the “stronger terms prevail”. That’s not how that sentence goes. It’s very specific in: if it’s an obligation (to the licensee, btw), then the other license prevails. Not the stronger one, the other one wins any conflict. It’s just concerned with the distribution of combined works, though.