Ivan Popivanov wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">I'm not the expert on the GPL, but my understanding is that:Hi,
I went through lots of material about MPL/GPL and other open source
licenses and still I'm not sure how to deal with my situation:
I have some source code, which I'd like to release as open source. I
need some license agreement to state that any modifications, etc.
should be released as open source as well. The problem is that I may
use this code for a commercial application. It seems to me that if I
GPL the code that I want to make available, then I have to GPL my
commercial application as well. Is that correct?
1. You don't have to GPL your other code, until
2. If someonn else makes modifications governed by the GPL and you use the modified version in your application, but all the code in your application must be governed by the GPL.
3. Anyone else who uses code you GPL in a commercial application must GPL all code in that application. (Or, to use the language of the GPL, must GPL all code in the "Program."
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">Yes. The MPL works on a file by file basis. Files which include MPL code must be governed by the MPL. Other files in your app can be governed by a different license, and the binary version of the complete app can be governed by a different license. The most well known example of this is the Netscape 6 product. Source for most of the product is governed by the MPL, source for some of it is proprietary, and the binary version is governed by a Netscape End User License agreement. The latter must tell people that the source for much of the product iis available under the MPL.
That's why I started looking for an alternative solution. It seems to
me, that if I use MPL, then I can all MPL'd source code in my
commercial application without having to make that application source
code available. Is that correct?
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">
Of course, if I made any modifications to the MPL'd code, I'm going to
make them available too.
Finally, what should I do in order to release the source code under
MPL? Shall I add the license agreement to the header files or I can
just have a single file containing MPL?
to use the MPL, you can add the license notice (not the complete license itself, this would be long) to each MPL file. We prefer this because then people know exactly which files are governed by the MPL.
Preformatted versions of the license header can be found here. Fill in the blanks with the appropriate info.
Thanks for asking!
Mitchell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">
