Ben Bucksch wrote:
> It seems like the relicensing is already going on. Did I miss any
> announcements or hasn't this been announced on .license?
There have been announcements that this is in progress for the last year
and a half. We are merely coming to technical execution.
> I find it somewhat irritating that you now change (NPL code) to the dual
> license, although my understanding was that you wanted to ask each and
> every contributor for permission (incl. contributors to NPL code).
I do not know where you got this understanding. Please read the FAQ for
the position on this issue.
> I'm not sure that the "special rights" of Netscape under the NPL
> amendments (which you cite as the base for the relicensing without prior
> permission) are applicable at all, because it has been suggested that
> this was for Netscape's pre-existing contracts with corporate licensees.
> ("This is included because Netscape already has certain source code
> licenses in place whose terms differ from those of this NPL. These
> licenses may not require the license back of code", Annotated NPL)
The Annotated NPL is _not_ a legal document. Please see the disclaimers
at the top.
> Now, as I said in previous discussions, I don't object to that change
> for files where I am a Contributor, i.e. I won't block such a change.
> But I find the current approach somewhat goofy, considering that some
> people here indeed seemed to oppose such a change to a GPL dual license.
Some people oppose the change. Netscape feels it wishes to relicense the
code under the NPL, and it has the right to do that. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
feel that making our code available to distributors using the GPL and
LGPL is a worthy goal, and we are working towards that by requesting
permission from contributors who contributed under the MPL. We would be
very happy if everyone else agreed that this was a worthy goal, but
understand that this might not be the case.
> I understand how difficult and time-intensive it is to get *all*
> contributors to even *react* at all. But shouldn't you at least make
> some modest attempt?
As a matter of interest, the wording which is being used for the
permissions email does not specify which licenses the code is being
relicensed from; therefore this objection that people are not being
informed would only apply to people who have contributed only to NPLed
files. But again, please read the FAQ.
> As for the code where I am the Initial Contributor, would it be
> acceptable for mozilla.org and Netscape (which Contributed some changes)
> that I relicense the code under a more liberal license, which is
> compatible to all of the MPL, NPL, LGPL and GPL, e.g. the BSD or MIT
> license? They are used for some dirs in the Mozilla tree already (in my
> understanding), but the license policy says that the agreement of
> mozilla.org is limited to those dirs.
It is, for the sake of simplicity. Eventually, we want people to be able
to take and use Mozilla code under a single license. There is nothing
preventing you having a tarball of your code on beonex.org with BSD
license headers on it.
Gerv
