MPL + an amendment (trying to guide a non-standard markup format)

[Michael Powers]

Hi

A couple of years ago I invented a simple 3D format based on XML that made
it easy for anyone to create a 3D web experience. The format in XML
compliant. I created a company called Flatland that developed Flatland
Rover to play 3DML files on Windows and Mac and in IE and Netscape browsers.

The time has come to open source the codebase for Flatland Rover so that
development can expand and continue within the community. The MPL license
looks like the way to go BUT (and there is always a but when a company
considers opensource):

3DML is not a standard format like VRML or HTML. It is a tag format we
developed. The last thing I want to see is the modification of the current
tags or random addition of hundreds of new tags that most players will not
understand. The MPL license enables this kind of growth and confusion of
tags, file extensions and MIME types. Has anyone run into this before? The
problem seems to be addressed more by the Artistic License than the MPL
license. I tried to incorporate the appropriate clause from the Artistic
License into an Amendment to the MPL license - and called in the Flatland
Public License.

Please review the license at http://www.flatland.com/FPL/FPL-1_1.html   and
see the amendment at the bottom of the page

I want to encourage use of a standard MIME type for 3DML and standard file
extensions 
and at the same time discourage use of these when someone incorporates tag
changes to the markup format.

Thanks for any advice,

Michael

inventor of 3DML