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

Luis Villa lvilla at mozilla.com
Mon Nov 22 16:01:49 UTC 2010


On 11/19/10 2:29 PM, Wilson, Andrew wrote:
>
> Luis,
>
> I believe your new MPL is definitely meets OSI requirements.

Thanks, Andrew.

I'll preface the discussion of 11.3 by noting that to the extent that 
this is really a discussion about the scope of GPL, I agree with Josh 
that this discussion may be more germane for license-discuss. I'll try 
to focus my comments here on the text of MPL and avoid speculation about 
the scope of GPL.

> 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.

Our working draft tweaks this:

"If You create a Larger Work by combining Compatible Software with a 
work governed by a Secondary License, and the requirements of Section 
3.1 are met, You may additionally 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.  Carol receives the sources from Bob
> and makes improvements to portions originally contributed by Alice.
> What license applies to Carol's improvements?  May Alice take
> Carol's patches and, without any additional license,
> apply them to her MPL code base?
>
> 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.

Because this is (to some extent) a question about GPL, rather than MPL, 
we will likely give guidance on this issue in a FAQ, or in a document 
similar to SFLC's document on incorporation of permissively-licensed 
code in GPL documents.

That said, we are open to any suggestions for ways to improve MPL's 
language in ways which would reduce tension with GPL's requirements.

Luis

-- 
Luis Villa, Mozilla Legal
work email: lvilla at mozilla.com (preferred)
work phone: 650-903-0800 x327
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