Best EUPL-1.2 Licensed Open Source Repositories

The European Union Public Licence version 1.2 is a copyleft license drafted by the European Commission and designed to be legally valid and enforceable across all official EU languages, unlike many open-source licenses that only have one authoritative English text. It works similarly to weak copyleft licenses like MPL-2.0: you can use, modify, and distribute the software, including inside larger commercial works, but if you distribute a modified version of the EUPL-covered code itself, you must release that modified source under EUPL-1.2 or a compatible license. Combining EUPL code with a proprietary application is allowed as long as the EUPL-covered parts stay separately licensed and available in source form.

One distinctive feature of EUPL-1.2 is its built-in compatibility list. The license text names a set of other copyleft licenses, including GPL-2.0, GPL-3.0, AGPL-3.0, MPL-2.0, and a few others, that you're explicitly allowed to relicense EUPL code under when combining it with software under those licenses. This solves a common copyleft problem where two share-alike licenses can't legally combine because each one insists derivative works stay under its own terms. EUPL-1.2 also includes clauses on jurisdiction and liability written with EU civil law in mind rather than the US-centric assumptions baked into many older licenses.

Projects based in Europe, especially government-funded or public-sector software, often pick EUPL-1.2 because it was written and vetted by EU institutions and holds up better under European contract law. It's less common in the broader open-source ecosystem but shows up in tools with European origins. Eza, a modern replacement for the ls command, is licensed under EUPL-1.2.