[erlang-questions] A PropEr announcement

[Dmitrii Dimandt]

Then MPL or EPL should work for PropEr, won't they?

To quote from EPL:
3.2. Availability of Source Code.
Any Modification which You contribute must be made available in Source Code form under the terms of this License

This covers the "requirement is that PropEr's license is a (preferably strong) copyleft: we would like to guarantee that any extensions to PropEr are  also free software". I believe that extensions can be treated as modifications (I can be wrong here).


As for distribution and usage:

2.1. The Initial Developer Grant.
The Initial Developer hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free,
non-exclusive license, subject to third party intellectual property
claims:

(a) to use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and
    distribute the Original Code (or portions thereof) with or without
    Modifications, or as part of a Larger Work; and 

(b) under patents now or hereafter owned or controlled by Initial
    Developer, to make, have made, use and sell (``Utilize'') the
    Original Code (or portions thereof), but solely to the extent that
    any such patent is reasonably necessary to enable You to Utilize
    the Original Code (or portions thereof) and not to any greater
    extent that may be necessary to Utilize further Modifications or
    combinations. 

3.7. Larger Works.
You may create a Larger Work by combining Covered Code with other code not governed by the terms of this License and distribute the Larger
Work as a single product. In such a case, You must make sure the requirements of this License are fulfilled for the Covered Code.


> Torben Hoffmann wrote:
>> I am afraid that the GPLv3 is contaminating in this case ...
>> However, as Eric mentioned earlier, the PropEr team is looking into adding a FOSS License Exception and now that the big v1.0 is behind them they hopefully get the time need to investigate this and see if it is possible to do.
>> The PropEr team has been very approachable about this issue so I think we should just wait for them to find the time it takes to get this done right.
> 
> Thanks for this comment!
> 
> We have discussed the issue extensively yesterday and today we wrote a mail to the Free Software Foundation to also ask their opinion and their suggestion on how to properly deal with the issues involved.
> 
> Quoting from the mail we sent to FSF:
> 
>  Our primary concern is that PropEr be as useful as possible to FOSS
>  programmers. Therefore, the most important requirement from PropEr's
>  license is that it allows FOSS projects (regardless of license) to:
> 
>    * use PropEr without restrictions, and especially without needing to
>      switch to another license
>    * release their testing code under whatever license they choose
>    * distribute PropEr freely, to be used as part of the build cycle of
>      the project, or for other uses (e.g. if the project in question is
>      an Erlang IDE, it could distribute PropEr as a plugin), again
>      without needing to switch licenses
> 
>  The above benefits need *not* extend to developers of proprietary
>  software. If PropEr's license could restrict them in some way, that
>  would be an added bonus, but this is not a strict requirement.
> 
>  Another requirement is that PropEr's license is a (preferably strong)
>  copyleft: we would like to guarantee that any extensions to PropEr are
>  also free software.
> 
>  // ... We also told them about the issue that the GPL is supposedly
>  //     unusable for Erlang programs due to the nature of Erlang.
> 
> In short, we are looking for a solution/license that will allow at least all open-source projects to use PropEr without any restrictions or by being contaminated by GPL.
> 
> I'll be surprised if we do not find a solution, but please bear with us until we resolve this the proper way.
> 
> In the meantime, you can use the software and the proper e-mail address for questions and comments.
> 
> Kostis
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