EC Introduces: EUPL - European Free/Open Source Software Licence

The European Union Public Licence (EUPL), is the Free/Open Source Software license initiated by the European Commission. It is available in 23 original linguistic versions and can be utilized by anyone for software distribution. The EUPL is certified by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and recognized as a Free Software Licence by the Free Software Foundation.

The EUPL operates as a reciprocal, share-alike, or copyleft licence, which implies that contributions and enhancements distributed, also known as "derivatives," must be shared back with the licensor and all other users. In contrast to other copyleft licenses like the General Public License (GPL) or Affero General Public License (AGPL), the EUPL is unique in that it is compatible with most other open reciprocal licenses and is interoperable.

Compatible means that the work covered by the EUPL can be used/merged and distributed in another work covered by other licences listed as outbound compatible in the EUPL Appendix. Interoperable means that the EUPL is applied in accordance with European Law. This provision remains applicable even when the EUPL is used in other regions globally. This ensures that the covered interfaces, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and data structures can be freely copied and used for implementing static or dynamic linking with any other independent component, without affecting the license of that particular component.