Rodrigo Saldaqa Zrate wrote:
>
> I just finished reading this 60-message long
> thread, and since I don't have the conclusion
> e-mail I was hoping for, I'm afraid it doesn't exist,
Since people have different goals how could there possibly be a conclusion
to a philosophical question about what type of license to use?
> I just wanted to picture this scenario
> that is maybe what Simon is worried about:
I think you've missed Simon's point. No one is worried that people will
change the license of code contributed to Mozilla itself, but the dual
licensing language being discussed allows for the possibility of a GPL-only
fork.
Alice has a proprietary product, but contributes a useful library to the
Mozilla project under MPL. If Bob makes improvements to the library--whether
contributed back to the Mozilla project or not--Alice will be able to roll
them back into her own product if she wishes as soon as Bob releases
whatever he's working on.
If Alice has to contribute the library as MPL/GPL that raises the
possibility that Bob could re-license a copy of the code under GPL-only and
use it in the "gfoo" project (and not contribute back to the Mozilla
project). Alice may be able to see the changes Bob made in the gfoo code,
but could not legally use those changes. Furthermore even if she had never
seen Bob's changes she might get in trouble with the GPL folks if she makes
similar changes in her version because Bob may assume it's from his code.
Now if Alice didn't care much about licenses and only wanted to help out the
Mozilla project she may not much care. But if Alice specifically used the
MPL instead of a BSD-like license because of its features she might be a
little upset. Bob's fork is as closed to her as the hypothetical proprietary
company's use of a BSD project is to its creators in the scenarios the GPL
folks spin to get you to use their license.
Bob's fork might, in fact, be doubly offensive to Alice because the GPL
folks have effectively done to her code (take without sharing back) exactly
what they say their license is aimed at preventing.
Dual-licensing isn't going to matter to folks totally gung-ho on Mozilla who
would contribute no matter what the license. It isn't going to matter to
folks who would be happy with a BSD-like license (they could, in fact, just
use a BSD-like license and be compatible with both MPL and GPL). But to
folks working on closed-source-friendly libraries who want the "share with
those who share back" nature of the MPL the allowance of a GPL-only fork
might be enough to keep them from contributing.
-Dan Veditz
