[ensembl-announce] Change of Ensembl License

[Paul Flicek]

Dear all - 

Early this year I wrote to you to say that we were considering a change of the Ensembl software license.  

I can now confirm that we will standardise the license for all of the code for which the project holds copyright to the Apache 2.0 license. The change will be effective as of the date of Ensembl release 74 which is due in December.

As a practical matter this should have no effect on any uses made of the Ensembl code.  By providing our code under one of the most widely used and well understood permissive open source software licenses, we seek to maximise the reuse and impact of our work exactly as we have done since the project was founded.

The change to the Ensembl software license will not effect the status of the data within Ensembl, which is provided without any restriction by the project. 

If you have any specific questions about the change in license or how it effects your individual situation, please feel free to contact me directly.


Paul Flicek
on behalf of the Ensembl Team