Re: [Avr-eclipse-user] Licensing of Eclipse AVR

[Thomas H. <th...@in...>]

On 26.03.2011 10:40, Chris wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I recently requested that the Eclipse AVR Plug-in be packaged and
> included in Debian [1]. However it was brought to my attention that
> Eclipse is licensed under the EPL, and this is incompatible with the
> GPL, this incomparability according to wikipedia makes combined works
> unlawful to distribute [2].
>
> Is this correct?

INAL, but I think that this might be correct.

The AVR Plugin was already GPL when I took over from the previous 
maintainer. I like the GPL so I continued with it. However I am aware 
that using a GPL Plugin with Eclipse is a somewhat grey area due to 
license incompatibility.

I have contemplated for some time to change the AVR plugin license to 
the EPL,  if only to reuse Eclipse and CDT code in the plugin (which I 
can't do as long as the plugin is still GPL).

A license change should not be too difficult as I have written probably 
95%+ of the code of the plugin myself. Most of the original GPL code 
from the previous maintainer and from those 2 or 3 contributors have 
probably been rewritten multiple times, but I would still have to check 
that and also, as a courtesy,  ask those contributors if they agree with 
a license change.

But as I don't really work on the AVR Plugin anymore (due to time 
constraints), I have not but any effort into a license change.

brgds,

Thomas


> Thanks,
>
> Chris
>
> P.S Please CC me if you reply as I am not subscribed to the mailing list
>
> [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=619631
> [2]
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Eclipse_Public_License
>
>