On Wed, 12 Sep 2001, Daniel Veditz wrote:
>
>>>> For that matter, why do we want to promote _any_ non-strong-copyleft
>>>> projects, other than Mozilla itself?
>>>>
>>> This has nothing to do with promoting a particular philosophy of
>>> software licensing.
>>
>> Maybe for you; for me that is a very important consideration.
>
> I'm lost, what's important to you?
On the long run, that everyone be allowed to do whatever they like with
all their programs, including modifying them, etc.
(Emphasis on "everyone" and "all". Not having the concept of 'copyright'
at all would satisfy this, by the way.)
> Are you unhappy that MPL is compatible with proprietary licenses?
Yes.
> Do you not understand why that was required from the beginning given
> the commercial origin of the code?
I understand it very well, that doesn't mean I like it! :-)
At this stage, having seen what parts of Netscape 6.01 were not covered by
the MPL, it is my belief that Mozilla could switch to the GPL without
stopping Netscape. The majority of the proprietary changes are things that
Netscape would be quite happy having other distributions use (e.g.,
keywords). The main exception would be the AIM code ("the COOL
components") which it would be hard to get under GPL... although to be
honest, I don't see why that code isn't open; it's not like AOL need that
code to be closed to make money. (They would still need to sell licenses
to potential users of the code so that the users could touch their
servers. Just having the source out there doesn't give anyone blanket
permission to use AOL hardware.)
>>>It has everything to do with permitting Mozilla code
>>>to be used in as many different projects as possible, regardless of what
>>>licenses are being used for those projects' code.
>>
>> If that is really the truth, then why are we not putting the Mozilla
>> source into the public domain? (Seriously.)
>
> It was discussed, and using a BSD-like license was strongly favored by some.
> The semi-copyleft of the MPL seemed like a good compromise, allowing the
> Mozilla project the possibility of taking back improvements and ensuring
> some visibility if our code got incorporated into popular projects.
A BSD-like license (or, for that matter, the public domain) would have
been compatible with the letter of the GPL (if not the spirit)...
Ah well.
--
Ian Hickson )\ _. - ._.) fL
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