"Simon P. Lucy" wrote:
>
> The licensing was split between Netscape Public
> Licence and Mozilla Public Licence. The practical difference between them
> was solely that Netscape was the original contributor in the case of the
> NPL and someone else in the case of the MPL. The NPL licence release was
> also made under the proviso that it would expire after two years and be
> subsequently licenced under the MPL (in practical terms it hasn't happened).
The difference between the two is that the NPL gives additional special
rights to Netscape. The most important of these expired after two years but
there are still some differences, notably the controversial section V.3 (IV
is largely irrelevant since we've rewritten nearly everything).
I don't believe Netscape promised to relicense the NPL files under the MPL
when the code was released; at the time the non-expiring rights in V.3 were
important to existing Netscape business deals. Times change, however, and
Netscape has subsequently announced its intention to dual license its NPL
code, and to switch to the plain MPL as part of that.
-Dan Veditz
