Commercial Open Source Software

6 Responses to “EU-funded Projects and Open Source”

1. 1 Miguel Ponce de Leon
   January 30, 2011 at 11:24 pm

   Roberto,

   I must say it was great the way you preemptively published this post before the actual event. I managed to show it during the meeting, and now many months later I’ve completed a short review post on the event.

   http://www.tssg.org/blog/miguelpdl/archives/2010/10/open_source_fp7.html

   Thanks again for you input on this.

   Miguel.

2. 2 Andrei
   July 29, 2011 at 9:35 am

   Hi Roberto.

   I have a question for you. Are they allowed to write in a tender dossier in an EU funded project that the software “MUST NOT be made available by the manufacturer under free software license – GPL or similar”. Is this legal?

   Thanks,

   Andrei

3. 3 Roberto Galoppini
   July 31, 2011 at 7:08 pm

   Dear Andrei,

   let me answer you bringing some other related issues on the table.

   Probably you know that EU projects must have a Consortium Agreement in place, and such consortium agreement regards the internal organisation of the consortium (included IPR) and it doesn’t involve the European Commission.

   Now, there are some templates for these Consortium Agreements, a well-known one is the one by EICTA (.doc document). You might want to take note of section 4.2.7.3, especially the excerpts below.

   
   

   (i) The Parties acknowledge that the use within the Project of Software that is “open source” (as defined at http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php), and/or the release of Foreground upon licence terms associated with such Software, may have benefits for the conduct of the Project and promote the Use and dissemination of the resulting Foreground. However, they also recognise that certain of such licence terms (namely Controlled Licence Terms) may restrict the options that are available for Use and dissemination of the resulting Foreground, and accordingly they wish to regulate, in accordance with this Section 4.2.7.3 the use of Controlled Licence Terms in relation to the Project and Use and dissemination of the results thereof.

   (ii) Without limiting the scope of this Section 4.2.7.3, the Parties acknowledge that the use in the Project or introduction into the Project of Background, Sideground or other Work held by a Party pursuant to Controlled Licence Terms [read "open source", as explained in (i)] may impair or otherwise affect the other Parties’ utilisation or Use of or Access Rights to Background, Sideground, Foreground or other Work. Each Party shall therefore abstain from using in the Project or introducing into the Project any Background, Sideground or other Work in a manner or upon terms that would or might result in a requirement that all or some of the Foreground, Sideground, Background or any other Work must, either generally or under certain circumstances, be licenced under Controlled Licence Terms, unless all Parties have unanimously approved in writing such use or introduction.

   (iii) Following the signature of this CA, any Party that is seeking such approval shall provide the other Parties with a written request for approval (”Request”) containing sufficient information, substantially in the format set out in Annex 5 hereto, to enable each of them to assess whether the introduction or use of the Background, Sideground, Foreground or other Work in question, upon the Controlled Licence Terms that are applicable to it, would or might result in any requirement referred to in paragraph (ii) above. Each Party shall inform the Co-ordinator in writing within 60 days from receipt of the Request whether or not it approves the use or introduction for which approval is requested in the Request. Any Party that fails to respond to a Request within the above period shall be notified by the Co-ordinator that it has a further 7 days to respond and in the absense of a response from such Party within such further period it shall be deemed to have approved the Request. As soon as possible after the lapse of such 60 day period (and any further periods as above), the Co-ordinator shall inform all Parties in writing whether or not such use or introduction has been unanimously approved. However, no approval of any Request shall constitute an agreement pursuant to paragraph (b) below that any Foreground may be sub-licensed on Controlled Licence Terms.

   As you can see, unless projects members don’t unanimously agree about the use of an open source licenses, it can be cumbersome at best to decide it at a later stage, and this is definitely no good in my opinion. Templates should be more favorable towards the creation, the use (and therefore re-use) of open source deliverables, because is us paying for such research projects.

   So said, I don’t think the EU is imposing any restriction in EU FP7 calls or similar tenders, but I guess in some special cases it might legally occur for a reason (e.g. a tender may require some sort of integration with a proprietary product posing specific limitations towards some open source licenses).

   Hope it helps.

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