As from June 2019, Joinup proposes a new solution: the JLA, a unique tool allowing everyone to compare and select open licences based on their content. The JLA is linked to SPDX (for Software Package Data Exchange), an initiative of the LINUX foundation that attempts to standardize the way in which organizations refer to software licenses: each licence is identified by a full name, such as "European Union Public Licence 1.2" and a shorter identifier, here "EUPL-1.2". Licences can be retrieved by entering all or part of their SPDX identifier: for example “UPL” will retrieve both the UPL-1.0…

Licensing copyrighted material is not only about software or closely related documentation: it may cover other assets, like specifications, data (i.e. resulting from statistics or from any big file managed in the field of land management, health, transport, commerce etc.) These data may generally be re-used, interpreted, simplified in some cases or presented in a different way in the framework of scientific or commercial activities. Therefore, ISA has developed a legal instrument or tool that could be used as a template in such case

When setting up a project that will be distributed to third parties, it is wise to select from scratch the convenient outbound licence (for example the EUPL licence, or the Apache, or the BSD-3 etc.) in order to regulate the use of your copyrighted work by these third parties. However, it comes that you are not alone to work on your project: the code and other copyrighted ressources may be provided by contributors (colleagues, employees, contractors, volunteers friends etc.) In such cases it is wise to determines clearly who is the project owner and at which conditions copyright are vested to…

Created in 2007, OSI approved in 2009 and updated in 2017 (v1.2), the EUPL is a legal interoperability solution that is proposed for use by software licensors across the EU (and abroad, as the case may be). The EUPL is used in more than 15000 projects. Why is the EUPL a good vehicle to help European public services and business distributing reusable software solutions?It is a "share alike" or reciprocal licence (also known as "copyleft") for sharing the covered work and its derivatives under EUPL terms, without exclusive appropriation;It covers multiple ways of distributing the covered "Work"…

This short presentation (a MS/.pptx document) provides essential EUPL aspects, in particular on what differentiates it from other open source licences. It can be freely downloaded/adapted/translated -…

Enter the Joinup Licensing Assistant (JLA) This is a an innovative tool in order to: Select open licences based on their content Obtain licence information from the SPDX repository (unique identifier…

Table of content below details available documents: guidelines, notes about licence compatibility, a matrix of EUPL compatible licences, EUPL FAQs and a documentation directory

For any question related to licensing or Joinup legal support, please fill the CONTACT FORM (selecting "legal issue" in the Category field). The legal support will answer you. Please note that the aim…

Which project can be hosted on Joinup? My program licensed under the EUPL uses components licensed under the GPL! Can I modify the EUPL? Are Joinup hosted projects “non-commercial” (program downloaded…

The EUPL is the licence of choice for distributing software from the European institutions or agencies and from several Member States. The EUPL has made such distribution possible on a much wider…

General purpose guidelines Thierry Aimé and al., A practical guide to using free software in the public sector (in English and French) Thierry Aimé and al., A practical guide to using free software in…