Mozilla To Be Dual Licensed - MPL/GPL

thegrommit writes "No doubt I'm one amongst many, but Mozilla is going to be dual licensing their codebase" Actually, thegrommit was the first, but it's great news. Congratulations to all involved - I've been using Mozilla a huge amount over the last three months, and it's pretty amazing. You can check out the FAQ for more details.

Comments

Atta Boys 'n' Girls

[Dr. Dew]

Although some of our friends in the Mainstream Press are going to be confused by the dual licensing thing, and attribute much bad to it, here are some VGTs:

1. If a project is going to engulf every activity it can think of, it's wise to use the same license as the rest of the known world.
2. It's good to see some of the core applications being used (thinking of MySQL now, too, but please don't hurt me) coming into the GPL fold.
3. August hasn't been good for Mozilla, newswise, and a little positive news may set the "no such thing as bad publicity" bit.
4. The licensing infighting is really confusing to those outside the community. The "many ways to do things" philosophy looks like confusion to them.
5. The licensing infighting is really confusing to those inside the community. Fracturing support for a project over legalese isn't wise.

Upon completion of the relicensing, I'll award the Mozilla folk an official Atta Boy. More await the release of a version usable by my father.

Re:This will be a big boon for the Galeon project.

[nd]

You are right, although it wasn't just the gtkmozembed header files either, it was much more complicated than that.

As it turns out, RMS himself helped us out and determined that we indeed would need to add a clause to the Galeon license for allowing us to link to the MPLed code. Without it, Helix Code and Debian probably wouldn't be able to distribute Galeon (for similar reasons why Debian doesn't include KDE). This kinda sucked, so we do plan to add the clause which will fix everything.

However, once this change occurs, we will no longer need it -- it will definitely make things more simple, though. We probably have Chris Blizzard to thank for this (in part).

As a new converted Galeon user....

[Pengo]

I must admit that I find myself browsing with Galeon more than I do with Mozilla these days. The simple and clean interface design out-weigh the 'Heavy' and feature full interface of Moz.

The biggest problem with Galeon is the steps involved in getting it to work. (They couldn't distribute the Mozilla compontents).

Using Galeon I get far fewer crashes (and Galeon is still in Alpha) than w/Mozilla or Netscape. It is MUCH faster than Mozilla and is close to being up to speed with Netscape with application zippiness. (GTK is fast!) :)

Give it a look, I believe that they are moving quicker than the Konquerer group because they are leveraging a rendering engine that WORKS.

Too bad that Opera never really happened. What a great little browser. Hehehee... long live open source.




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Re:As a new converted Galeon user....

[orabidoo]

I must admit that I find myself browsing with Galeon more than I do with Mozilla these days. The simple and clean interface design out-weigh the 'Heavy' and feature full interface of Moz.

my experience is that Galeon isn't quite ready for heavy use yet, but Mozilla pretty damn near is. I've been using M17 quite a bit for the last week, and I haven't had a single crash yet. The odd page that won't load, form entry field that grows and shrinks by a pixel randomly (pushing the rest of the page up and down.. real funny effect!), some UI oddities, sure, but it has basically rendered everything I've thrown at it, and done a good job of it. Once you get past the half-a-second redraw sluggishness, it's already much better than Netscape 4.7x.

Galeon, OTOH, still has some very basic functionality missing: you can't scroll up and down with the arrow keys, space and backspace; "see source" isn't there, forms have some problems, right-button menus aren't there yet, downloads don't work, much is missing from the preferences menu, etc etc.

it also has some very good points: the interface loads *fast* (faster than NS4.7, and much much faster than mozilla), what works, works pretty well. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Galeon surpassed Mozilla in usability, and got all the features it needs, pretty soon. But for the moment I can't say it's usable for day-to-day browsing yet, and Mozilla is.

IE?

[setec]

Okay, I might get flamed for this, but it's still important to point it out. If Microsoft has ever created one, single, half-way decent product, it's Internet Explorer. I mean, really, it's good stuff. It's stable, very widely supported, free, and it's not picky with poorly written HTML, so it displays almost every page correctly. We shouldn't count Netscape/Mozilla/Opera/etc out, but we should keep in mind that IE is currently king of browser mountain. I AM open to any complaints to IE, if anyone feels they need to make them.

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AB Fab!!

[jelwell]

This is absolutely fabulous.

Now with GNOME/Nautilus/Star Office/Mozilla all rolled into the GNOME foundation Linux is going to start making some desktop headlines. Not to mention what Star Office/Mozilla could do for Windows.

Joseph Elwell.

Dual-license your code in 21 days!

[Mike Shaver]

Dual licensing is not a new concept, luckily, so there's some good precedent here for us to point at. Also luckily, it's not that hard to get around as long as you deal with it in small steps.

First, you can imagine that a dually-licensed source file is really two files: one that has the GPL at the top, and the other than has the MPL at the top. When you use the file -- distribute it, compile it into a binary and distribute that, combine it with other code -- you can choose which of those ``virtual files'' you're dealing with. So if you want to use nsMozFile.cpp with your GNOME app, you might choose to use it under the GPL. But when Netscape builds Netscape 6 from nsMozFile.cpp, they'll probably choose to mean the requirements of the MPL instead of the GPL.

I'll restate that, because it's traditionally the sticking point: a dually-licensed file lets you choose which license you will honour. You have to meet the requirements of one of the licenses, at least, so mixing and matching requirements is obviously out. (Obviously. I'm embarrassed to even mention it.) You do not have to meet all the requirements of both licenses, and in fact it's impossible to do that, because the GPL forbids additional restrictions, and the MPL has several requirements that would fall under that category.

So what about changes? Well, now you've got three choices: you can create a derivative that is GPL-only, or a derivative that is MPL-only, or -- perhaps better still -- a derivative that is also dually-licensed. mozilla.org would certainly prefer that people keep things dually-licensed, for the same reasons that we want to dually-license it in the first place: it serves a larger community of contributors and consumers. Now, we can't require that your derivative be dually-licensed; that would violate the terms of both licenses, I suspect, but certainly the GPL. So all mozilla.org can do is exert control over its infrastructure, and insist that contributions which go into the cvs.mozilla.org tree be dually-licensed. It's still well within anyone's legal rights to create a GPL-only derivative of Mozilla, and fork the world. I think that would suck, a lot, and even RMS has in the past discouraged people from doing that. If nothing else, it would discourage other organizations from going the dual licensing route.

I hope that helps some. I'm really psyched about this; it's been a dream of mine (and others') since before Mozilla was even released, and the success of dually-licensing the JavaScript, NSPR and NSS/PSM code whet my appetite for more. Please join us in the mozilla-license forum for more discussion.

The Greeks knew it two millenia ago...

[Kaufmann]

At this hour. Slashdot is being read :-)

I know this may be a confusing concept for you to cope with, but you see, as the Earth rotates around its axis, the part of it which is illuminated by the Sun changes constantly. So when it's the middle of the night where you are, in many other places it's the middle of the day, and a lot of people there are reading Slashdot. By the time those people are sound asleep in the middle of the night, you'll be studying or at lunch or posting to Slashdot or something; when you're doing this, remember: the time of day varies depending on where you are.

I know that understanding it fully is too much to ask from you, but please give it a try so that, even if you do remain stupid, at least you won't sound like you are anymore.

Steal the Crown Jewels

[Threed]

All the complaints about Mozilla - Netscape/AOL tie-ins, bloat, feature creep, unnecessary duplication of extant functionality, license incompatibility (galleon) - are about to be cured.

It'll be Free. It'll be linkable and reusable. All the extra crap can be stripped out. It'll be a wonderful day.

But the next day might be bleak indeed, and this is where your acid test might fail.

The MPL fork will remain the most cohesive, especially if the GPL releases lag behind the MPL. No one will maintain it as a full fledged project on its own (like the Linux Kernel is). It'll be more like GhostScript - the latest and greatest will cost you (cash), the next best is free (beer) - only in Mozilla's case it's costing freedom.

In order to make it a true acid test (and really, in order to save Mozilla from complete crapitude, my opinion), it has to completely break away from Netscape and then pick up a new, powerful maintainer (a Benevolent Dictator).

In any case, when it comes time to submit a patch, submit it under the GPL, even if that means it won't make it into the Netscape-maintained codebase.

In other words... We oughta take the crown jewels and run like hell. Maybe leave behind a thank you card.

--Threed-Looking out for Numero Uno since 1976!

Troll Alert

[Metrol]

I've used Mozilla now and again (M14 I think is the last one I touched), and it's stability leaves a great deal to be desired.

Yeah, I was trying out Windows 2.0 a little while back. Boy did it ever suck. Nobody would ever use that. Ack, and did you see that Linux 0.8 kernel? That'll never get anywhere either.

It's easy to envision there will be some individuals who are philosophically opposed to the GPL, and will refuse consent on that basis.

A bunch of volunteers working on an open source project with deep philosophical problems with GPL. Are you from Redmond?

This could potentially lead to a very messy code split

Kids, don't try taking logical leaps like this at home. Obviously this person is a professional and has taken the proper safety precautions to avoid falling into a mental abyss.

Other than that, good post.

Re:Confused

[technos]

You get the software/code, and then you choose. One or the other, and yes, you can change your mind.

This will be a big boon for the Galeon project...

[infodragon]

The Galeon project will probably be one of the first to greatly benifit from the relicensing! Slashdot had a discussion about Galeon back in July.

Currently they cannot distribute the gtkembmoz.h file, due to licensing restrictions, which is needed for compiling the source code.

Through Galeon, this will also directally effect the GNOME project. Giving it a simple browser utilizing the Gecko rendering engine. We will, with evolution/nautilus(SP?) have seperate apps for browsing, e-mail, and file/system management! Along with the upcomming GPL of Star Office, GNOME is on the move to providing a complete productivity environment without the bloat!

Because they want something back.

[yerricde]

If they want everyone to be able to reuse the code, why don't they just BSD the whole thing?

Because they want the rights back for any changes to the codebase. With copyleft licenses such as MPL and GPL, mozilla.org gets rights to use the changes, which could remain a company's "precious trade secret" under non-copyleft licensing.

<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!

Trying to Salvage a Failed Project?

[HomerJ]

Hear me now, believe me later, Mozilla is a failed project. It's not a useful browser, that is if you do more then read slashdot. Yow want to click on a link on shoutcast and have xmms load? You want Java? You want a browser that doesn't take up more memory then Homer does food at the all you can eat buffet? Then don't use Mozilla. Not now, not ever.

This is just a way for a failed project to salvage itself. By hoping that someone else(because they haven't been able to) will be able to make a browser that's 1/4 of what even Netscpae 4 is, let alone IE5.

The only way people will use any part of Mozilla, is if it's parts of other programs. Be it AOL software, Natualius, or whatever.

This isn't flamebait. It really isn't. But to say that Mozilla is useful for anything besides light browsing for more then 15 minutes at a time(before it segfaults) is just wishful thinking and sour grapes at IE5.

I really hope this last ditch effort saves something from the Mozilla project. Maybe other people other then Netscape/AOL employees will start to work on it and finally release something I'm not embarased to say is an open source project.

Good luck Mozilla....you're going to need it.

Re:My Immediate Concerns

[Ami Ganguli]

1. The recent builds are MUCH better than just a few weeks ago, much less M14. It really is starting to shape up nicely.

2. I beleive the MPL allows Netscape (and only Netscape) to release the code under their own licence. If there own licence happens to be the GPL then that's their right.