Re: Reusing the MPL in non-Mozilla projects

Julien Ponge wrote:
> I am particularly interested in the MPL license for future projects, be
> it by applying the sole MPL or by applying a multi-licenses combo. I
> have searched a bit about using the MPL in non-Mozilla projects, but
> there are surprisingly not that many related informations...

That's because most uses of the MPL in non-Mozilla projects have been in 
the form of MPL-derivative licenses, and not the MPL itself.

> 1. Is the MPL a reusable license, or is its wording very tied to the
> Mozilla project? The CDDL was apprently created by Sun to be a reusable
> MPL-derivative, but I cannot clearly see how much this is accurate or
> not.

The MPL is sort of reusable, but in practice it hasn't been re-used that 
much in non-Mozilla projects. See below for more on this topic.

> 2. The license is bound by the laws of California (section 11), so how
> about projects started in non-US countries?

If you want to use the original MPL then you are "stuck" with California 
jurisdiction. This is one major reason why people have done their own 
MPL-based licenses under other names.

> 3. Does the Mozilla Foundation intend to promote its licensing model to
> other projects?

It's not really a major priority for the Foundation to promote the use 
of the MPL in non-Mozilla projects, for the following reasons:

First, the MPL is "showing its age" somewhat. There are some areas where 
the license could be made clear, could be brought up to date with 
current thinking on how open source licenses should work, and in general 
  could be improved. It's possible that a new "MPL 2" or similar license 
could be created to address these issues, but that's not an immediate 
prospect IMO.

Second, in the world of traditional open source and free software the 
MPL is somewhat handicapped because the Free Software Foundation 
considers it to be incompatible with the GPL. Given the large amount of 
GPL-licensed software out there, this poses a problem for a project that 
uses a pure-MPL licensing scheme. (And in fact this is why the Mozilla 
project itself shifted to using a MPL/GPL/LGPL "tri-license".)

Finally, in the world of "corporate open source" the MPL approach has 
been much more popular, but most corporations have opted to use the MPL 
as a base for their own licenses, as opposed to adopting the MPL "as 
is". This is partly to address questions like jurisdiction (as mentioned 
above) but also because corporations employ lawyers, and lawyers always 
like to revise licenses and other legal documents to suit their own 
ideas :-)

Frank

-- 
Frank Hecker
[email protected]