JTK wrote:
> Pierre Chanial wrote:
>
>>Please could you clarify the following point:
>>Can Netscape stop the Open-source Project at any time and take their NPL files
>>with them so that Mozilla could not use them anymore?
>>Excerpt from the NPL:
>>"V.3. Alternative Licensing.
>>Netscape may license the Source Code of Netscape's Branded Code, including
>>Modifications incorporated therein, without such Netscape Branded Code becoming
>>subject to the terms of this License, and may license such Netscape Branded Code
>>on different terms from those contained in this License."
>
> Well I don't know about pulling the code completely, but that makes is
> crystal clear that Netscape can at any time decide to change NPL to
> MPL+GPL or whatever else they so choose and there's not anything anone
> can do about it, including the "one-line copyright holders" Gerv wants
> you to believe are holding up the non-existent transition plan.
Be careful there... The existing code is released with a particular
license which describes your rights to use it. Once this is done, they
can't retract it. However, that doesn't restrict the copyright holder
from putting a different license on future releases.
So what's open source now can't be retracted. At worse, the copyright
holder (Netscape, I assume) could close future source releases, but
you'll still be able to continue development on the current source version.
David
