On 8/16/10 10:41 AM, Ben Bucksch wrote:
The old MPL 1.1 section 3.2 demanded that the Source Code is either
on the same medium (DVD, USB stick) as the Executable, or downloadable
("available ... via an accepted Electronic Distribution Mechanism").
The new section 3.2 and 3.3 a) makes no restrictions at all apart from
"reasonable" and "nominal charge".
I realize that the GPL has language similar to the new wording,
however I considered MPL to be better.
Our thinking was that when we encouraged 'reasonable' distribution, we
could now rely on two things: (1) there is now a pretty broad
understanding of what 'reasonable' distribution is for free/open
software, which is pretty much in line with what we were already
requiring (2) we could include in a FAQ some examples of what we mean by
'reasonable' distribution, allowing it to be more flexible than actually
including it in the body of the license itself. This has the bonus of
being future-proof; we were already seeing some creakiness around the
old language and modern development practices and I think we expected
that would only get worse.
Why shouldn't you make the source available per download?
Generally, you should; that is 'reasonable' modern open source practice.
But you can imagine situations where it might be hard to include source
through the available technology (e.g., some application stores); we'd
like to encourage people to be creative there rather than set out strict
definitions in the license itself.
In fact, I'd mandate that it must be available freely to everybody
(not just recipients of the executable) for free per Internet HTTP.
You received free, you shall give free.
That would be broader than any other open source license; generally
speaking even GPL only creates obligations to people whom you've
distributed executables to, rather than to the entire world. We can look
at it, though; honestly it just wasn't something we ever considered.
Let me know if this didn't answer your questions, Ben-
Luis
--
Luis Villa, Mozilla Legal
work email: [email protected] (preferred)
work phone: 650-903-0800 x327
personal: http://tieguy.org/about/
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