Mistaken statement about MPL?

[Rob Lanphier]

On Tue, 2005-04-12 at 12:57 -0700, Bruce Perens wrote:
> IMO, this was meant as a criticism of the NPL, not MPL. It's really easy
> to get them confused. If that's the case, we should clear it up and move on.

Here are the specific factual problem:  "But seven years later, we think
it is is significant that the original corporate open-source license,
the Mozilla Public License, has been dropped by its originating
organization in favor of the GPL."

This statement is wrong on at least two levels:
*  It was the NPL, not the MPL that was dropped.
*  The NPL was dropped in favor of tri-licensing under MPL, LGPL, and
GPL.

The Mozilla Relicensing FAQ explains it pretty clearly:
http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/relicensing-faq.html#why-use-special-rights

Note that the NPL gave Netscape the latitude to quickly relicense that
code under MPL/LGPL/GPL.  We at RealNetworks had the similar luxury of
unilaterally adding the GPL to our licensing options for all
contributions we accepted under RPSL.  While we're also using the "belt
and suspenders" approach of also having a contribution agreement, it's
useful to consider the benefit of having the contribution agreement
built into the license.

Rob
-- 
Rob Lanphier, Development Support Manager - RealNetworks
Helix Community: http://helixcommunity.org 
Development Support:
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