Presentation of the Compatibility Checker at the Joinup Users’ Group on 19/11/2020

One year ago JOINUP (the EC sharing web site) presented the JLA – Joinup Licensing Assistant
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/solution/joinup-licensing-assistant/jla-find-and-compare-software-licenses

The JLA analyses now more than 50 open licenses

The main innovation of the JLA is the possibility to SELECT open licenses based on their content

The JLA was also an example of synergy with the SPDX project of the Linux Foundation. The JLA adopted the SPDX license identifier as a standard and is linked with the license full text that is provided from the SPDX data base.

In a second step, JOINUP added a new functionality to COMPARE open licenses: up to five licenses can be selected for obtaining a table comparing their specificities.

Today we present a third step: a Compatibility Checker in order to assess the possibility to COMBINE source code obtained under different licenses and to distribute it.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/solution/joinup-licensing-assistant/jla-compatibility-checker

For checking this compatibility you will select ONE INBOUND LICENSE (which is the license of the code that you want to use) and ONE OUTBOUND LICENSE (which is the license that you would like to use for the distribution of the combined software.

After validating your selection (via the Check Compatibility button) the JLA expert system will provide an answer. It analyses up to four types of “use”:

• Use as a distinct or complementary solution component (part of the same distribution).
• Use as a tool for producing your own software functionalities (normal use of the tool, according to its usage instructions).
• Use in a combination via linking (interfaces from the used program are copied in your own program).
• Use in a combination via merging the two source code.

This new functionality was put in production on 19 November 2020