For Approval: MindTree Public License

[Ian Lance Taylor]

"Shahnawaz Khan" <shahnawaz_khan at mindtree.com> writes:

In the open source licensing community, MPL is widely used to mean
"Mozilla Public License."  I suggest that you use a different
abbreviation for your license.

> 5.	All Modifications created and Distributed by You shall be clearly identifiable to have been made by You. You shall submit, in writing 
> or electronically in a manner that can be unequivocally attributed to You, Your Modifications to MindTree, or any other agency authorized 
> to make available the Original Licensed Software, for its inclusion in the Original Licensed Software. Your Modifications shall be 
> documented in a file as part of the Source file which shall also contain Your name, permanent physical address, email address, the date of 
> the modification. If You have knowledge that a license to a third party's intellectual property right is required to exercise the rights 
> granted by this MPL to Your Modifications, including the right to use an API, You must declare so and describe the claim and provide 
> adequate information about such party in the said file.

This clause is the most troublesome from an approval perspective.
APSL 1.0 had a similar clause, and it was generally considered to be a
bad idea.  In particular, consider what happens if MindTree suddenly
goes out of business without authorizing any other agency.  Does it
then become impossible to distribute the software?

Ian