expansion of compatibility clause [was Re: MPL 2 section 11]

[Luis Villa]

On 11/23/10 7:25 AM, John Cowan wrote:
> Schmitz, Patrice-Emmanuel scripsit:
>
>> I naively believe that [provide components that benefit to the
>> widest possible FOSS communities] is the right one from MF point
>> of view and that the value of FOSS software increases when it is
>> the most widely used, not when restricting this freedom of use.
>
> Well, that's why permissive licenses exist, but the MPL is not one of
> them.

John is correct. We want broad use, but with the significant caveat that
we want to ensure that Modifications of MPL code (as we define them) can
be reused by other MPL communities to the greatest extent practicable. 
So simply extending to all OSI licenses is untenable; there must be a 
narrower criteria for additions.

On 11/23/10 8:50 AM, Simon Phipps wrote:
> I'd thus suggest being liberal with your list of secondary licences.
>
> As a minimum, I suggest the list on
> http://opensource.org/proliferation-report  of Licenses that are
> popular and widely used or with strong communities (with the
> addition of GPLv3 et al and EUPL which have arisen since the report)
> be accommodated.

Note for the record that many (most?) of those licenses do not need 
additional permissions to combine into a Larger Work (e.g., Apache), so 
there is no need to list them in the compatibility clause. But it is a 
good reference list for popular/important licenses, thanks.

On 11/23/10 11:54 AM, Tzeng, Nigel H. wrote:
>
> While I would like to see the permissive/copyleft issue solved
> someday but I really was thinking was that it would be nice for
> futureproofing if MPL ALSO automatically provided compatibility with
>  any OSI approved copyleft licenses that reciprocates with MPL in
> addition to the explicit licenses listed like GPL.  That way future
> versions of other OSI approved copylefts could include reciprocity
> with MPL and no further MPL changes are required and there is some
> incentive to do so.

We will consider this suggestion. Note that Creative Commons pursued a
similar route in CC-BY-SA 3.0 (using itself as the certification agency
rather than OSI), but has not actually approved any such licenses-
whether because of lack of interest from other parties, or lack of
acceptable candidates, I don't know.

Luis

-- 
Luis Villa, Mozilla Legal
work email: lvilla at mozilla.com (preferred)
work phone: 650-903-0800 x327
personal: http://tieguy.org/about/