Comments on: Updating the MPL

By: about:mozilla » Jetpack, MPL, dev tools, mobile, add-ons, OOPP, video, Test Pilot, and more…

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:32:15 +0000

[...] Several people have blogged about this effort, including Mitchell Baker, Harvey Anderson, Luis Villa, and Gervase [...]

By: Luis Villa

Luis Villa — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:26:41 +0000

I guess there are other reasons why this can’t be done, could you talk about it for us legal-newbies? :) The FAQ talks about it, but nutshell is that (L)GPL- particularly v3- has vastly different copyleft requirements than MPL, which would place very different requirements on our contributors and distributors than we used to. Switching gears like that mid-stream without incredibly good reason is not a good idea. (Frankly, we'd be more likely to switch to Apache than GPL, if I had to guess, though I should stress heavily that neither of those is planned!) Ian: Chromium is primarily BSD-licensed, not Apache.

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:52:49 +0000

There’s no need for a tri-license with both LGPL and GPL, as the LGPL lets you re-license as GPL anyway. It only needs to be MPL/LGPL.

Interesting point with regards to including Apache code within the Mozilla project (e.g. from Chromium) – they’ll have to update LGPL/GPL to version 3+ rather than 2+.

To be honest, I’d prefer just dropping the MPL and using the LGPLv3+ for all of the code. That also allows taking *any* code from WebKit, including that which is only LGPL-licensed.

By: bochecha

bochecha — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:28:19 +0000

From my outsider point of view with very little legal insight, I’d say it’s pretty easy to use a copyleft license that is compatible with the GPL : simply use the GPL.

This also improves the “issue” of having so many different licenses to choose when writing a new project.

I guess there are other reasons why this can’t be done, could you talk about it for us legal-newbies? :)

By: Luis Villa's Internet Home / Updating the MPL

Luis Villa's Internet Home / Updating the MPL — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:38:56 +0000

[...] for me to help out, and I’m excited to get started on it. Post a comment — Trackback URI RSS 2.0 feed for these comments This entry (permalink) was posted on Thursday, March 11, 2010, at [...]

By: Luis Villa

Luis Villa — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:53:33 +0000

This seems to be a bit of a FAQ; I’ll probably have to write a blog post on it soon.

Nutshell: the tri-license is effective-but-ungainly, so we’ll investigate trying to replace that with clean compatibility. If we can do it, we probably will. But as Simon points out, it is not easy to do with even a mild-copyleft license, which, by nature, includes language to the effect of ‘you can’t place additional restrictions on the code.’ Suggestions on how to do it (at Simon’s suggestion, we’re looking at the EUPL as one route) are welcome.

By: Mark Wielaard

Mark Wielaard — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:57:30 +0000

Having a file based “weak” copyleft license like the MPL being (L)GPLv3 compatible would be very nice! Go for it!

Or is the intention to keep using the triple-license MPL/LGPL/GPL choice for all Mozilla code?

By: mlinksva and friends, page 2 - Identi.ca

mlinksva and friends, page 2 - Identi.ca — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:53:54 +0000

[...] day late, my post on updating the MPL: http://tieguy.org/blog/2010/03/11/updating-the-mpl/ about an hour ago from web at Bayside Village, San Francisco, California, US in [...]

By: Simon Phipps

Simon Phipps — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:15:37 +0000

Bradley: That was one of my first questions too. I think it has to be one of the top priorities. The real question is how, since we already know it is very hard to make any copyleft license “compatible” with GPL. Would you propose using explicit waivers like EUPL does, or what?

By: Bradley M. Kuhn

Bradley M. Kuhn — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:34:13 +0000

Obviously my only ask for the MPL is that you get a license out the other end that is GPLv3 compatible. I have no other requests/comments but that. Is that even on the table? Should I even bother to comment about that?