The document discusses the Eclipse Public License version 2 (EPLv2) and the process for projects to switch from EPLv1 to EPLv2. It provides an overview of changes made in EPLv2 including broadening the scope, adding definitions, and allowing for GPL compatibility. It then describes the steps projects would take to switch including updating file headers and notices, getting contributor approval, and documenting the new license.

1. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Eclipse Public License v2.0
Overview
Mike Milinkovich
Executive Director
Eclipse Foundation
mike.milinkovich@eclipse.org
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2. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
History of the EPLv1
• Based on the Common Public License v1.0
– IBM was the author/steward
– ~2001
• Eclipse Public License v1.0
– OSI approved ~November 2003
– Part of the discussions that led to the creation of the Eclipse
Foundation in January 2004
– Only changes from CPL:
• Scope of patent termination
• Eclipse Foundation is the license steward
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3. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Goals for EPLv2
• Broadened to include all “content”, not just “code and documentation”
• Files vs “module”
• Choice of law
– Necessitates defining derivative work
• Modernization
– Use in scripting languages (source = executable)
• Necessitates defining source and executable code
– Source code availability
– Subclassing now explicitly excluded (community norm)
– Notices
• GPL compatibility
– Modeled after approach used in MPL 2.0
• Miscellaneous cleanup
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4. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
What did not change
•Copyright license
•Patent license
•Patent termination
•Commercial Distribution
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5. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Who has worked on this?
• Eclipse Foundation IP Advisory Committee
– Mike Milinkovich - Exec. Director, Eclipse Foundation
– Jeffrey Neuburger - Proskauer, Eclipse Foundation Counsel
– Terry Carroll, IBM Counsel
– Richard Fontana, Red Hat Counsel
– Max Andersen, Red Hat, Director - Eclipse Foundation
– Ed Merks, Director - Eclipse Foundation
– Donald Smith - Oracle, Director - Eclipse Foundation
• Public discussions on epl-discuss and conference calls
– Til Jaeger, Jim Wright (Oracle), Jeff Thompson (IBM), Andrew Katz,
etc.
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6. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Scope of “Contribution”
•EPLv1 referred to “code and documentation”
•EPLv2 broadened to refer to “content”
–Many projects include icons, gifs, documents so
it makes sense to ensure that there is no
ambiguity that they are covered
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7. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
File vs. Module
•“File” has clearly won as the term of art
–Clearer, widely understood
–Ties to the DCO, which the Eclipse Foundation
has started using
•A one word change in the definition of
Contribution
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8. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Choice of Law
•Removed references to New York State
•Included a definition for “Modified Works”
–Used to determine the scope of the copyleft
–Definition explicitly excludes subclassing
•Included a definition for “Derivative Works”
–Used to provide the copyright license grants
–Basically a copy of the US statute definition
• Approach used by ALv2
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9. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Scripting Languages
•Added definitions of Source Code
•Simply made the scope of the copyleft to be
based entirely on making source code
available
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10. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Source Code Availability
•Removed the requirement that the Source
Code for a Program must be made available
by the Contributor (a.k.a. the distributor)
–Happy to have people point to the origin, rather
than copying and hosting
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11. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Notices
• Added “..., patent, trademark, attribution notices,
disclaimers of warranty, or limitations of liability…” to the
list of notices which cannot be removed or altered
• Removed “Each Contributor must identify itself as the
originator of its Contribution, if any, in a manner that
reasonably allows subsequent Recipients to identify the
originator of the Contribution.”
– We will make this a matter of community policy, rather
than a license obligation
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12. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
GPL Compatibility
Motivation:
• Eclipse Foundation has projects which are dual-licensed
EPLv1+BSD to allow for use with GPL-licensed projects
• This loses the copyleft, as consumers will often elect to
select the permissive license
• Would like to allow for GPL compatibility while maintaining
EPL copyleft.
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13. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
GPL Compatibility
•Use the “Secondary Licenses” approach of
the MPL 2.0
–EPLv2 is not compatible by default. Notice has to
be added to make a Program GPL compatible
–The initial Contributor decides if the Program can
be made available under GPL
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14. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Miscellaneous
• Removed
– “No party to this Agreement will bring a legal action under this Agreement
more than one year after the cause of action arose. “
– “Each party waives its rights to a jury trial in any resulting litigation.”
• Added
– “AND TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW” to the warranty and
limitation of liability sections
• Done to address concerns in Europe that the previous wording would
be unenforceable.
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15. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Approvals
• Unanimously approved by the Eclipse Foundation Board
• Reviewed and approved by the Open Source Initiative
– certified open source.
– included in their “popular” list
• Reviewed and approved by the Free Software Foundation
– certified free software.
• GitHub is apparently a harder nut to crack….
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16. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Why Switch?
• Definitely a better license for non-USA venues
• More explicit definition of copyleft requirements
• Better international license
• Because the Board said so
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17. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Switching to the EPL-2.0
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18. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Switching from EPL-1.0 to EPL-2.0
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• Update the file headers and notices
– Socialize with the project team and community
"Each new version of the Agreement will be given a distinguishing version number. The
Program (including Contributions) may always be distributed subject to the version of
the Agreement under which it was received. In addition, after a new version of the
Agreement is published, Contributor may elect to distribute the Program (including its
Contributions) under the new version."

19. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Switching to EPL-2.0
with Secondary License
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The project team would like to re-license the existing project content
under the Eclipse Public License version 2.0 with secondary license
compatibility with the GNU General Public License version 2.0.
The Eclipse Foundation must ensure that all authors of contributions,
including both committers and non-committer contributors, agree to
re-license their work under the new licensing scheme.
Content owners must express their agreement by providing a +1.
Via Bugzilla/GitHub Issues

20. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Aside: Copyright Owners
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• Content author may not be the owner
• Employment contract may stipulate that
employer is the owner

21. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Legal Documentation
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22. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Old File Headers
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/************************************************************************
* Copyright (c) {date} {owner} [, and others]
*
* All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
* are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
* which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
* http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
*
* Contributors:
* {INITIAL AUTHOR} - initial API and implementation
************************************************************************/

23. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Basic EPL-2.0 File Header
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/*********************************************************************
* Copyright (c) {date} {owner} [, and others]
*
* This program and the accompanying materials are made
* available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0
* which is available at https://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0/
*
* SPDX-License-Identifier: EPL-2.0
**********************************************************************/

24. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Aside: SPDX® License Identifier
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• Standard format for communicating the
components, licenses and copyrights
• Standardized license codes
– EPL-2.0, Apache-2.0, MIT, ...
• License expressions
– EPL-2.0 OR Apache-2.0, EPL-2.0 AND Apache-2.0

25. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Dual Licensing Header
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/********************************************************************************
* Copyright (c) {date} {owner}[and others]
*
* This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the
* terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 which is available at
* http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0, or the Apache License, Version 2.0
* which is available at https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.
*
* SPDX-License-Identifier: EPL-2.0 OR Apache-2.0
********************************************************************************/
Use “or” to indicate
choice of license.

26. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Secondary Licenses Header
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/********************************************************************************
* Copyright (c) {date} {owner} [and others]
*
* This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the
* terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 which is available at
* http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0.
*
* This Source Code may also be made available under the following Secondary
* Licenses when the conditions for such availability set forth in the Eclipse
* Public License, v. 2.0 are satisfied: GNU General Public License, version 2
* with the GNU Classpath Exception which is
* available at https://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html.
*
* SPDX-License-Identifier: EPL-2.0 OR GPL-2.0 WITH Classpath-exception-2.0
********************************************************************************/
Not quite right, but we’re working with
the SPDX community to sort this out.

27. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Licenses and Notices
27
git.eclipse.org/project.git
├── LICENSE
├── NOTICE
└── ...
https://www.eclipse.org/projects/handbook/#legaldoc
• We’ve updated/generalized legal
documentation requirements

28. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
(Dual) License File Example
28
This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the
terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 which is available at
http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0, or the Apache Software License
2.0 which is available at https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.
... Text of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 ...
... Text of the Apache Software License 2.0 ...
Use “or” to indicate
choice of license.

29. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Aside: Project Licenses
29
• “Declared licenses”
– License(s) under which project code is
distributed
– Includes Secondary Licenses
• “Third party content licenses”
– License(s) of included third party content

30. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Secondary Licenses Example
30
This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the terms
of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 which is available at
http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0, or the Apache License, Version 2.0 which
is available at https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.
This Source Code may also be made available under the following Secondary
Licenses when the conditions for such availability set forth in the Eclipse
Public License, v. 2.0 are satisfied: GNU General Public License, version 2 with
OpenJDK Assembly Exception which is available at
http://openjdk.java.net/legal/assembly-exception.html, and GNU General Public
License, version 2 with the GNU Classpath Exception which is available at
https://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html.
... Text of the licenses ...

31. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Notices...
31
This content is produced and maintained by the Eclipse OpenJ9 project.
* Project home: https://projects.eclipse.org/projects/technology.openj9
Eclipse OpenJ9 is a trademark of the Eclipse Foundation. Eclipse, and the
Eclipse Logo are registered trademarks of the Eclipse Foundation.
== Declared Project Licenses
This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the terms
of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 which is available at
http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0, or the Apache License, Version 2.0 which
is available at https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.
...

32. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
… Notices
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• Basic project metadata
• Declared project licenses
• Copyright holders
• Third party content licenses
• Cryptography statement (if necessary)

33. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Legal Documentation Generator
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https://www.eclipse.org/projects/tools/about.php?id=technology.openj9
Project teams are responsible
for getting this right; get help
from PMC or EMO

34. October 2017 © Copyright Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Useful Links
• Eclipse Public License 2.0
– eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0
• Eclipse Public License 2.0 FAQ
– eclipse.org/org/documents/epl-2.0/faq.php
• Legal Documentation for Eclipse Projects
– eclipse.org/projects/handbook/#legaldoc
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