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.

This year I decided to switch my “default license” to EUPL-1.2. This is an OSI-approved free software license created and published by the European Union. And it is quite a divergence from the licenses I’ve used in the past. EUPL is a strong copyleft license that closes the “SaaS loophole” by requiring reciprocal licensing regardless of how the software is distributed.

Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along.

We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires.

And so it is time to stop messing about with permissive licenses. If corporations don’t want to use our software under our terms, they are free to spend the effort or tokens to build their own.

  • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
    3·
    7 hours ago

    It allows mixing EUPL-1.2 code with other copyleft licenses, less restrictive than GPL.

    Yes and no. I guess it depends on what you call “less restrictive”, or “lesser copyleft”. The comparison table makes it a point to mention that “lesser copyleft” is not allowed, if “lesser” means it takes away some of the core freedoms awarded by the EUPL.

    To that end, the EUPL 1.2 comes with an explicit list of other copyleft licenses that are compatible for cross-licensing. This page has a good explanation on how it works:

    Note: this does NOT change the EUPL licence of the original software component (that is NOT re-licensed). In addition, for all derivative works, EUPL provisions stay appliable where not in conflict with the compatible licence. this is because Article 5 states that the compatible licence will prevail in case its provisions conflict with those of the EUPL.

    For example, the EUPL accepts, when needed, the LGPL and MPL for covering derivatives (these licenses are known to be “less or weak copyleft”). But the LGPL and MPL do not conflict with the EUPL on the coverage of remote use (SaaS) or on the obligation to publish source code. When the compatible license is silent on such points, the EUPL obligations persist.

    There’s also the issue of what you mean by “mixing”. I’ve covered cross-licensing above. If you mean interoperability (aka linking) that is explicitly allowed by the EUPL 1.2.

    • vas@lemmy.ml
      1·
      6 hours ago

      P.S. Also, thanks for the clarification. It makes sense. I just have to read this more carefully, should I adopt the license. Do you use it by the way?

    • vas@lemmy.ml
      1·
      6 hours ago

      I was talking about mixing indeed. An example of a license that I think is less strong - but can be mixed with EUPL - is MPL (the Mozilla one). Your quote clarifies what happens in that case though: EUPL’s requirements still hold. I still haven’t looked at it sufficiently carefully. Also, sadly, the referenced page has multiple mistakes so I feel I need to read the actual license in detail before getting convinced. (My take on tivoization is also different than what the author of the page where he says “Note: This is still controversial: …”.) That page is also just a “news” article, and not a definitive source. So it’s OK to be less polished, but then it means a push for me to trust the license itself only.