Julien Ponge wrote:
I am particularly interested in the MPL license for future projects, be it by applying the sole MPL or by applying a multi-licenses combo. I have searched a bit about using the MPL in non-Mozilla projects, but there are surprisingly not that many related informations...
That's because most uses of the MPL in non-Mozilla projects have been in the form of MPL-derivative licenses, and not the MPL itself.
1. Is the MPL a reusable license, or is its wording very tied to the Mozilla project? The CDDL was apprently created by Sun to be a reusable MPL-derivative, but I cannot clearly see how much this is accurate or not.
The MPL is sort of reusable, but in practice it hasn't been re-used that much in non-Mozilla projects. See below for more on this topic.
2. The license is bound by the laws of California (section 11), so how about projects started in non-US countries?
If you want to use the original MPL then you are "stuck" with California jurisdiction. This is one major reason why people have done their own MPL-based licenses under other names.
3. Does the Mozilla Foundation intend to promote its licensing model to other projects?
It's not really a major priority for the Foundation to promote the use of the MPL in non-Mozilla projects, for the following reasons:
First, the MPL is "showing its age" somewhat. There are some areas where the license could be made clear, could be brought up to date with current thinking on how open source licenses should work, and in general could be improved. It's possible that a new "MPL 2" or similar license could be created to address these issues, but that's not an immediate prospect IMO.
Second, in the world of traditional open source and free software the MPL is somewhat handicapped because the Free Software Foundation considers it to be incompatible with the GPL. Given the large amount of GPL-licensed software out there, this poses a problem for a project that uses a pure-MPL licensing scheme. (And in fact this is why the Mozilla project itself shifted to using a MPL/GPL/LGPL "tri-license".)
Finally, in the world of "corporate open source" the MPL approach has been much more popular, but most corporations have opted to use the MPL as a base for their own licenses, as opposed to adopting the MPL "as is". This is partly to address questions like jurisdiction (as mentioned above) but also because corporations employ lawyers, and lawyers always like to revise licenses and other legal documents to suit their own ideas :-)
Frank -- Frank Hecker [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ legal mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/legal
