Seeking contact.

[RobertZenz]

I'm one of the two new maintainers of the Enhanced Class Decompiler plugin for Eclipse. I'd like (or better, have) to discuss a matter with you regarding our plugins. Could you please contact me under the email address provided in my profile. Thank you.

[emmanue1]

Hi @RobertZenz, sorry to contact you so late.
A possible copyright/license violations ?
I've write JD-Eclipse from scratch in 2014 / 2015.
Ready to answer your questions.

[RobertZenz]

Thanks for coming back to me.

@pbi-qfs and I have forked and maintained an Eclipse plugin which allows to view decompiled class files directly in the IDE. It works by decompiling the class files on the fly and displaying the source code in an editor. This works by having several (optional) decompilers shipped with it which do the actual work.

After we've taken over the project we've noticed that quite a lot of the code seems to be copied from other sources and I have the very strong suspicion that a lot of code of the actual plugin is based upon jd-eclipse directly without any attribution. With ECD being currently licensed under EPL, we'd be violating your copyright by using that source code.

My request would now be the following, if you have the time, please review the source code of the main package and the one using JD externally. If you believe (a suspicion is already enough for me), that we are actually distributing source code under a violation of your license, I'd like to propose the following to remedy this situation:

1. The whole ECD project is relicensed under GPLv3 to comply with your license.
2. You're added to the credits/attribution list and we'll state so in the README.

If we are violating your copyright and these terms are not sufficient for you, the only thing I can offer is that we cease the development and distribution of ECD rather immediately (which would be quite a waste, honestly, as it is widely used).

[emmanue1]

Hello @RobertZenz and @pbi-qfs,

First, thank you for your message. I really appreciate.

Next, it seems that ECD is based on my project. The structure of the plugin is identical even if the author has added several evolutions to correct the current limitations of JD-Eclipse.

Do not cease the development and distribution of ECD : stopping your project will not serve the Java community.

Maybe could you keep your current license and simply write that you had my agreement to continue the ECD project. My proposal is only for JD-Eclipse source code. The JD-Core is excluded from this agreement.

Is it okay for you ?

[RobertZenz]

Maybe could you keep your current license and simply write that you had my agreement to continue the ECD project.

If you'd be ready to do that, we can do that. As I said, the GPLv3 would require a relicensing of the project. We are ready to do that, we wouldn't have a problem with that.

If you'd be ready to state that we can keep your source code under EPL (with attribution, obviously), we can also do that. Which of these is completely up to you, as we can not make that decision. Either is fine with us, as in both cases we can continue development (and finally managed to clear up one of the possible licensing problems we have there).

One last note. If you allow us to keep your source code under EPL, you also grant this right to everyone else, it cannot be an exclusive license. So you'd basically dual license big parts of jd-eclipse under EPL and GPLv3. Whether that is something you want is up to you.

[dhuebner]

Hi guys,
I think EPL would fit very well here.
Looking forward to see JD as Part of the Java Developer eclipse package!