European Commission finalises the draft EUPL v1.2

The draft EUPL v1.2 was presented at the European Commission Senior Management meeting as well as at the Cabinet meeting.

After this presentation, a specific point was still under investigation: the possibility of an “opt out” clause regarding the updated list of compatible licences. This list is not only extended to the GPLv3 and AGPLv3, but also to other copyleft licences like the MPL or the LGPL that protect the covered files or the derivatives of the covered works against exclusive appropriation (prohibition of re-licensing the covered files or their derivatives under a proprietary licence) without any ambition to extend their coverage to the whole work or application in which the covered file is integrated or linked.

The MPL v2 is an example of OSI-approved licence that includes this kind of opt-out.

After in depth investigation, the Commission decided to maintain the EUPL v1.2 project as it was presented originally in the public discussion forum and to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), without this opt-out clause, for the following reasons:

• Combining works under different licences is low compared to simple re-use of the work.
• Based on the Commission experience with the current EUPL version, only a limited number of licensors chose to limit licence to a specific EUPL version.
• With such an opt-out clause, the meaning of “licensed under EUPL" would be quite different depending on the use of clauses and generate less clarity when communicating what the features of EUPL are.
• The legal interoperability with other copyleft licences is one of the main and most important characteristics of the EUPL and should not be sacrificed.