Greetings all, Over in webdev, we've been having some unproductive arguments over how our website code should be licensed. I'm hoping this list will be able to enlighten us.
The repo in question is http://github.com/jbalogh/zamboni/, the new version of addons.mozilla.org. Bug 539671 asks that we add a license to that repository. I'd like to license our web code under a simple, permissive license like the BSD. I find clause 3.5 of the MPL, which requires a duplicate of the license text in every source file, onerous and fatiguing in our repositories. We create a lot of small files with code or templated HTML, and often the 40 lines of boilerplate license outweighs the lines of code. Even with large files, the first thing I invariably see when opening a file is a full screen of license. I can try to hide it with my text editor, but I look at our code in more than just a text editor. Sometimes I work with it on the command line, often I look at it through a web interface, and hiding the license for myself doesn't help all the other people who look at our code. It feels slightly trivial to complain about 40 lines so much, but I think the developer ergonomics of confronting the license at every turn are poor. In addition, the community we're working with uses and shares primarily BSD-licensed packages. I'm not sure if there are any restrictions to importing MPL code into a mostly-BSD codebase, but I'd like to make our interactions with them as smooth as possible. Advice on this point would be appreciated. I'm not completely clear why our Mozilla product code is under the tri-license, but I have a feeling that it's not as relevant in our webdev environment. The code that makes up a complete website is typically only run by us, but we share basic packages with the community. Our websites won't be distributed with any operating systems, and if parts are used in a corporate setting, I don't mind. I don't think our circumstances call for the MPL or the tri-license, but I'd like to make sure other parts of Mozilla are comfortable with this. Thanks, Jeff Balogh p.s. If you're curious, we're working on github because: * we like the interface * it's fun to interact with the greater open-source community on github * IT doesn't have git hosting set up on mozilla servers _______________________________________________ legal mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/legal
