Actually, there are a bunch of projects that use the MPL. The larger
projects tend to make their own licenses; smaller projects use the MPL.
Generally the smaller projects don't get as much attention so the use of
the MPL itself isn't as clear.
There isn't much discussion of this, as we haven't tried to evangelize
use of the license. So we don't have a lot of discussions of using the
MPL. The CDDL was created for a couple of different reasons, it's
like the MPL but makes some changes as well.
The MPL is generally considered reusable. There's an open question
about whether to try to take choice of law out of the MPL but that
hasn't happened yet.
On promoting the use of the MPL I have somewhat different view than
Frank. I think we want to avoid getting into "license wars" and some
open source projects are very focused on promoting their licenses. I
would like the Foundation to be a voice for finding ways to help more
code interoperate. There are a number of people and organizations not
interested in the GPL, and so I don't see that as the answer. The MPL
might be helpful. I agree with Frank that I don't see the Foundation
taking on licensing evangelism as a focus. But I also think that
avoiding MPL derivatives when possible and having the MPL as a useful
choice for people who want it is a good goal.
mitchell
Frank Hecker wrote:
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
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