Simon P. Lucy wrote: >Actually, having read the FAQ, even if I hadn't thought that Mozilla, for me, was a >dead project it certainly is now. Forcing developers to licence their own work under >the GPL simply means that developers such as myself can never contribute back because >of the risk of having our own future unrelated development and client development >affected. > Simon, I think you misunderstood the issue. I see 3 cases:
People downloading the Mozilla source have the *option* to use your contributed source code under the GPL. Nomally, the source is guarded by MPL. Now, if (and only if) the opt to use the GPL instead, *they* are forced to follow the GPL terms, which means that they have to release the full source of all *their* binaries which link to Mozilla. In other word, you get their source, while you aren't forced to do anything. If you contribute code to mozilla.org and at the same time use it (and only it) in one of your products, you don't have to care about the Mozilla license, because you have the copyright and you (in most countries) have the right to license your work to any number of people under any number of licenses. If you use Mozilla code (presumably with code contributed by people other than you) in your app, you don't need to use the option of using the GPL. You follow the MPL terms. The dual license explicitly says that it's optional to use it under the MPL: <quote src="http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.html";> Alternatively, the contents of this file may be used under the terms of the _____ license (the "[___] License"), in which case the provisions of [______] License are applicable instead of those above. </quote> "Alternative", "instead". If you opt to use the MPL and distribute the binary which includes Mozilla code and proprietary code, your users don't get the Mozilla portions of the binary under the Mozilla dual license, they get the whole binary under the license terms you choose. The MPL allows that and Netscape does it. All you have to do is to follow the MPL terms of releasing the *source* to your Mozilla source modifications. There, we are back at case 1, which, as we already saw, is no problem either. HTH. I am not a laywer. This is not legal advice. Feel free to add that to the FAQ, if you want, assuming appropriate credit. Ben
