Team Eiffel

The Board of NICE, the Nonprofit International Consortium for Eiffel, has passed the following motion:

To reduce license proliferation and confusion, NICE encourages users of the EFL2 license to consider relicensing under the MIT License. We do *not* wish to discourage programmers from using other popular GNU and GNU-compatible licenses like the BSD license.

Can I continue to use the Eiffel Forum License?

Certainly. This motion is an "encouragement" and nothing more. You are free to continue using the Eiffel Forum License (version 1 or 2) if it suits your needs.

Will the Eiffel Forum License retain its OSI certification?

Yes. The Eiffel Forum License retains its status as an OSI-certified open source software license.

Why is NICE deprecating the Eiffel Forum License?

OSI, the Open Source Initiative, recently listed the Eiffel Forum License as redundant because it is essentially equivalent to other more widely used software licenses. Proliferation of redundant licenses runs counter to the goals of the open source movement because it can make interoperability more awkward. Also, some corporations are wary of open-source software and may not be able to use software using niche licenses that have not been reviewed by their legal department.

Why is NICE encouraging the MIT license rather than the similar BSD license?

The MIT license is already more widely used within the Eiffel community, including for the SmartEiffel libraries. It is very short and clear.

What if I prefer to use the BSD license, the GPL, the LGPL or some other license?

Feel free to use another license if it meets your needs. All that NICE is doing is encouraging you to consider the MIT license as an alternative to the Eiffel Forum License.

What about compatibility with the GPL?

The MIT license is compatible with the GPL, just as the Eiffel Forum License is. This means that you can take MIT or EFL code and freely combine it with GPL code, provided the resulting work is licensed under the GPL.

But I like the part of the Eiffel Forum License that encourages distributors of compiled code to release their source modifications back into the community.

No problem. That part of the Eiffel Forum License is not legally binding, so you can append it to the MIT license text with equal effect.

I maintain code that is released under the Eiffel Forum License. What should I do?

The choice is yours: you can continue to license your code under the EFL if you wish. Or, you could license future releases under the MIT or some other license. OSI stated in correspondence to NICE that they were not aware of any problems that would arise moving from the EFL2 license to the MIT license.

What is the text of the MIT license?

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.