Thanks to everyone who has commented on this.  I have been away for a couple of weeks, struggling to make sense of this and trying to make a sensible recommendations in the best interest of the community; including EPS, which is a fundamental part of our community.

EPrints 3.3 is available under a GPL license (see: https://github.com/eprints/eprints)   

“EPrints is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.”

The full text of the license is here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

EPrints 3.4 is a derivative work, “modified version” from EPrints 3.3, and therefore, the conditions of the GPL license are applicable to it.

The thing is that the GPL license is a copyleft license; i.e.,  it imposes restrictions on redistribution of “modified versions” with additional conditions/restrictions attached – in particular, distribution that prohibits further redistribution of the source code. That is my understanding of the GPL license.  Similar to Dobrica’s comment, I also don’t understand how a GPL license could have a non-distribution clause attached to it – it seems to me that GPL prohibits precisely that sort of thing.  I need to mention, however, that I’m not a lawyer. 

 

In terms of recommendations for the community, I think that as responsible repository managers/administrators, we should, at the very least (1) ensure that source code that is merged with our repositories is granted to us under a known licence. 

What I mean by that is that the licence that is attached to the source code is at the very least known to you and retrievable/referenced. The beauty of open source is that normally, as a community, we don’t have to waste time worrying about this because the open source license is implied in forums of exchange and sharing that takes place in collaborative development. The problem with EPrints 3.4, right now, is that its license is unknown.  Apparently, it has some additional non-distribution clauses/conditions, but these don’t seem compatible with GPL, under which we normally share software in this community.    So at the very least, I would recommend that if you are upgrading your repository with “managed availability” code, that you ask what license it is distributed to you under.  I think that is responsible administration of a repository.

 

In addition to that, I would also make the case that open source is better; I know that one of the key justifications for using EPrints for us was its open source status.  As a community, we are not powerless in this situation.  We can express our support for open source by making it clear that we prefer for EPrints to remain compliant with GPL, and (2) wait for the time when an open source license comes with any modified versions before we install them.  Even though it means indefinite delays (no public release date has been given for ‘managed availability’ code), I think I will nevertheless be waiting until the source code that is to merge with our repository comes with an open source license.

 

Those are my own personal thoughts on this topic.  

 

Best wishes,

 

Tomasz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Tomasz,