Ian Hickson wrote:
> You mis-read what I wrote. Nokia do not intend their product
> to be used as a Flash Renderer, they intend it to be used as
> a web browser. The point is that the plugins are not deriative
> works (they in fact can be created, compiled and used totally
> independently of the hypothetical GPL Mozilla).
> They are distinct products. And since they are not deriative
> works, they can be shipped together with GPL product without
> breaching the GPL license. That, at least, is my reading of
> the GPL. Did I miss a particular clause that denies even this?
I guess the underlying question here is "If a program released under the
GPL uses plug-ins, what are the requirements for the licenses of a
plug-in?" For the FSF's opinion on this, see
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins
To quote from their answer: "If the program dynamically links plug-ins,
and they make function calls to each other and share data structures, we
believe they form a single program, so plug-ins must be treated as
extensions to the main program. This means they must be released under
the GPL or a GPL-compatible free software license."
The answer to the question also lists one case where the FSF considers
plug-ins to fall outside the scope of the GPL (invocation by fork and
exec) and one case they consider to be borderline (invocation through a
call to a single main entry point, with no callbacks or shared data
structures).
Now this is just the FSF's opinion. Anyone actually wanting to
distribute your proposed GPL-only Mozilla together with proprietary
plug-ins would of course be well advised to consult a knowledgeable
lawyers as to their legal risks given the way the Mozilla plug-in
architecture is designed, and their possible defenses should they in
fact be sued for copyright infringement by a Mozilla contributor who
happens to agree with the FSF on this particular question.
The bottom line (for me at least) is that the Mozilla code distributed
through mozilla.org has always been distributed under license terms that
permit it to be used in combination with proprietary code. This has been
clear from day one to all potential Mozilla contributors and all
potential Mozilla distributors (i.e., people using Mozilla code to
create their own products); in fact the code would never have been
released by Netscape in the first place had it not been possible to
create proprietary Mozilla-based products.
In response to your suggestion to have mozilla.org pursue a change to
GPL-only licensing of Mozilla code, I do not see any possible benefit
from that to the Mozilla project that is compelling enough to justify
disallowing actions which have hitherto always been permitted, and
thereby placing a significant burden on various Mozilla contributors and
distributors who have replied (or plan to rely) on the ability to create
proprietary Mozilla--based products.
Now I do see a compelling benefit in changing the Mozilla licensing
scheme in a way that reduces the barriers to using Mozilla code in other
projects that are using the GPL or LPGL as their main licenses. That's
why I'm supporting the idea of relicensing Mozilla code under some sort
of dual or tri- licensing scheme. But I'm not going to present this as
some sort of ideal "best approach". It's a compromise, pure and simple,
and the nature of compromises is that no one gets everything they want,
and everybody can find something to object to.
(And that includes me, by the way -- if this were my decision alone, and
if I were accountable only to myself, then I would relicense the Mozilla
code under a non-copyleft license that had the absolute minimum of legal
language, e.g., like the MIT license. Multiple years of dealing with
these issues have made me heartily sick of working through the
complexities of copyleft licenses.)
Frank
--
Frank Hecker
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
