Mozilla Public License 2 Alpha 3; request for early review prior to formal submission for approval

[Joel Rees]

On Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:29:36 -0800
"Wilson, Andrew" <andrew.wilson at intel.com> wrote:

> 
> Luis,
> 
> I believe your new MPL is definitely meets OSI requirements.
> 
> Having said that: Although not really germane to OSI approval,
> I would appreciate clarification of the effect of section 11.3.
> 
> > 11.3. Notwithstanding the requirements of Section 3.1, if You
> > create a Larger Work by combining Compatible Software with a work
> > governed by a Secondary License, You may also distribute the Larger
> > Work under the terms of the Secondary License.
> 
> So the question is, Alice releases a program under MPL 2.  Bob takes
> Alice's program, combines it with GPL code, and releases the
> combination under GPL. 

Ergo, the combined work, the larger work.

The individual pieces have not been re-licensed, only the whole has been released under (some version of) the GPL.

You cannot legally license something you don't own copyright to, unless you have somehow been invested in the right to extend licenses by someone qualified to do so. Is this not correct?

> Carol receives the sources from Bob
> and makes improvements to portions originally contributed by Alice.
> What license applies to Carol's improvements? 

Within the limits of the license which Carol operates under when she makes the modifications, Carol decides.

If she doesn't want to work under the limits of the license on the whole work, she can choose to operate under the license of the part. 

If necessary, she can go download the part from the part's original source, is this not correct?

> May Alice take
> Carol's patches and, without any additional license,
> apply them to her MPL code base?

Depends on Carol's choice of license on her contributions.

There is some ambiguity when Carol doesn't specify, and I'm going to guess that, in the absense of terms in either/any of the licenses involved, directing a default assumption of license when contributors are not explicity, some judges/juries will choose one and some will choose another.

> Note this is a perennial question about the license status
> of permissive-licensed code which has been incorporated into
> a GPL-licensed larger work.  Since you are adding a permissive
> clause to MPL, you might want to give advance guidance.

As in, specify a default license on contributions?

> Andy Wilson
> Intel open source technology center
> 
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Joel Rees <joel_rees at sannet.ne.jp>