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

[Luis Villa]

On 11/19/10 9:02 AM, John Cowan wrote:
> Luis Villa scripsit:
>
>> If it would be helpful for OSI, I can create a master redline from 1.1
>> that incorporates all changes and commentaries into a single document,
>> but that will be a few days.
>
> It would be very helpful, I think.

Attached is a master redline from 1.1 to our current working draft for 
Beta 1. This contains changes which are not present in Alpha 3, and is 
still a work in progress, but should be similar in most ways to Beta 1 
(and hopefully to the final release!)

My apologies for not also attaching a redline to Alpha 3 (if some of you 
have already looked at that) but doing a good redline from 1.1 is an 
extremely time-consuming manual process (software-generated redlines are 
unreadable at this point, given the vast scope of the changes involved).

>> We've gotten a lot of private feedback, which is reflected in the
>> various drafts, so we're not short of legal advice, generally.
>
> A minor point: 11.2 defines "compatible Software" but 11.3 uses
> "compatible Covered Software".

This is fixed in the attached working draft.

> In addition, 11.2 should allow
> the use of other words to the same effect, and not require that the
> exact text of Appendix A be used.  Finally, consider moving 11.1 and
> 11.2 themselves to Section 1.

We will consider these comments.

> I also find the language in 2.3 about "no new grants" disturbing when read
> in conjunction with 10.2 and 11.1.  If the Mozilla Foundation decided to
> add more Secondary Licenses to 11.1 in MPLv3, then it would be necessary
> for anyone other than the owner who upgrades a source-code distribution
> from MPLv2 to MPLv3 to add language saying that the new Secondary Licenses
> are inapplicable.  (This may be academic, considering that the approved
> language in Appendix A enumerates the Secondary Licenses explicitly.)

We are currently considering similar comments from others. Note that the 
language about grants is inspired by similar language in GPL 3.

>> However, we've received no specific commentary on OSI/OSD compliance,
>
> I will drive a stake into the ground and say "This license is obviously
> OSD-compliant."

Thank you. This was obviously one of our primary goals all along, but it 
is still reassuring to hear someone actually say it. :)

We continue to look forward to other feedback (positive or negative) 
from other list members; I hope the redline helps that process along.

Luis

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