Multilingual and interoperable - EU Public Licence is the choice for software integrators

Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz, legal expert

Among ISA² solutions, the European Union Public Licence (EUPL) is very specific. Its goal is to provide a modern licensing tool to all software licensors in Europe: European institutions, national administrations and even to private developers.

The promotion of the EUPL is a long-term action. It was originally forged in 2005 after multiple studies and consultations. Its first version 1.0 was trilingual. In 2009, main open source and free software organisations approved the EUPL 1.1. In 2017, the European Commission published the EUPL 1.2, which is now available in 23 languages and has extended compatibility.

EUPL as interoperability tool

If you search, you will see that multiple open licences exist. Like some of them, the EUPL is used by developers or licensors to publish their software, while keeping control on the copyright and receiving reciprocity, i.e. a copy of improvements in case other persons modify it and distribute it.

However, beyond its unique multilingual character,  the main role of the EUPL is to serve as a legal interoperability tool: the EUPL is the most interoperable of all so-called “copyleft” or “reciprocate” licences, because it is compatible with other existing licences. Compatibility is important because programming today means assembling and integrating various software components. The EUPL is the licence of choice for integrators.

The EUPL is part of our common European Legal Framework, which present legal security across the whole Union. In case of issue in any EU country, judges may address questions and obtain answers from a unique court, the Court of Justice of the European Union.

The EUPL provides protection and feedback to licensors without invading other projects: European law clearly states that linking software distributed under the EUPL with any other software cannot be restricted and will not impact the various existing licensing conditions.

Last, the EUPL is a modern licence, applicable to all forms of distribution, including via internet. It may cover all kind of copyrighted works: software and ancillary data as well. 

EUPL adopted by EU countries

When distributing software, EU Member States have adopted the use of the EUPL in their legislation (Spain and soon France), official guidelines (Italy) or they use it in practice (Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, etc.).

Private sector enterprises make frequent use of the EUPL as a secure licensing tool when their business model is based on open source. 

EUPL as collection and community

The EUPL is a Joinup collection where are published news, interviews, studies and events. Such information is linked to software licensing in general, and not exclusively to the EUPL. The collection publishes other interesting solutions like the Joinup Licensing Assistant, which is an interactive tool for comparing and selecting open licences, for both software and data.

The EUPL collection includes a free legal support where questions about licensing will be answered.

Finally, I would like to invite you to join the EUPL community hosted on Joinup. You can also share your own content on licensing questions with the community and connect with professionals involved in licensing.