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Mozilla Public License

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Mozilla Public License
Author
Mozilla Foundation[1]
Latest version
2.0[1]
Publisher
Mozilla Foundation[1]
Published
January 3, 2012[1]
DFSG compatible Yes[2]
FSF approved
Yes[3]
OSI approved
Yes[4]
2.0: Yes[3] (by default, unless
marked as "Incompatible
GPL compatible
With Secondary Licenses")
1.1: No[5]
Copyleft
Partial[6]
Linking from code
Yes
with a different license
The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is a free and open source software license developed and
maintained by the Mozilla Foundation.[7] It is a weak copyleft license, characterized as a middle
ground between permissive free software licenses and GNU General Public License (GPL), that
seeks to balance the concerns of proprietary and open source developers.[8]
It has undergone two revisions,[9] a minor update to version 1.1, and a major update to version
2.0 with the goals of greater simplicity and better compatibility with other licenses.[10]
The MPL is the license for Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, and most other Mozilla
software,[11] but it has been used by others, such as Adobe to license their Flex product line,[12]
and The Document Foundation to license LibreOffice 4.0 (also on LGPL 3+).[13][14] Version 1.1
was adapted by several projects to form derivative licenses like Sun Microsystems' own
Common Development and Distribution License.[15]

Contents

1 Terms
2 History

3 Notable users

4 Licenses based on pre-MPL 2.0

5 References

6 External links

Terms
The MPL defines rights as passing from "Contributors" who create or modify source code,
through an optional auxiliary distributor (themselves a licensee), to the licensee. It grants liberal
copyright and patent licenses allowing for free use, modification, distribution, and
"exploit[ation]" of the work, but does not grant the licensee any rights to a contributor's
trademarks.[6] These rights will terminate if the licensee fails to comply with the license's terms
and conditions, but a violating licensee who returns to compliance regains their rights, and even
receiving written notice from a Contributor will result in losing rights to that Contributor's code
only. A patent retaliation clause, similar to that of the Apache License, is included to protect an
auxiliary distributor's further recipients against patent trolling. The contributors disclaim
warranty and liability, but allow auxiliary distributors to offer such things on their own behalf.
In exchange for the rights granted by license, the licensee must meet certain responsibilities
concerning the distribution of licensed source code. Covered source code files must remain under
the MPL, and distributors "may not attempt to alter or restrict recipients' rights" to it. The MPL
treats the source code file as the boundary between MPL-licensed and proprietary parts, meaning
that all or none of the code in a given source file falls under the MPL. An executable consisting
solely of MPL-covered files may be sublicensed, but the licensee must ensure access to or
provide all the source code within it. Recipients can combine licensed source code with other
files under a different, even proprietary license, thereby forming a "Larger Work" which can be
distributed under any terms, but again the MPL-covered source files must be made freely
available.[6] This makes the MPL a compromise between the MIT or BSD licenses, which permit
all derived works to be relicensed as proprietary, and the GPL, which requires the whole of a
derived work, even new components, to remain under the GPL. By allowing proprietary modules
in derived projects while requiring core files to remain open source, the MPL is designed to
motivate both businesses and the open-source community to help develop core software.[16]
The one exception to covered source files remaining under the MPL occurs when code under
version 2.0 or later is combined with separate code files under the GNU GPL, GNU Lesser GPL
(LGPL), or GNU Affero GPL (AGPL). In this case, the program as a whole will be under the
chosen GNU license, but the MPL-covered files will be dual-licensed, so that recipients can
choose to distribute them under that GNU License or the MPL.[3] The initial author of MPL code
may choose to opt out of this GPL-compatibility by adding a notice to their source files.[6]
It is explicitly granted that MPL-covered code may be distributed under the terms of the license
version under which it was received, or any later version. If code under version 1.0 or 1.1 is
upgraded to version 2.0 by this mechanism, the 1.x-covered code must be marked with the
aforementioned GPL-incompatible notice. The MPL can be modified to form a new license,
provided that said license does not refer to Mozilla or Netscape.

History

Version 1.0 of the MPL was written by Mitchell Baker in 1998 while working as a lawyer at
Netscape Communications Corporation.[17] Netscape was hoping an open source strategy for
developing their own Netscape web browser would allow them to compete better with
Microsoft's browser, Internet Explorer.[18] To cover the browser's code, the company drafted a
license known as the Netscape Public License (NPL), which included a clause allowing even
openly developed code to be theoretically relicensed as proprietary.[19]
However, at the same time, Baker developed a second license similar to the NPL It was called
the Mozilla Public License after Netscape's project name for the new open source codebase, and
although it was originally only intended for software that supplemented core modules covered by
the NPL, it would become much more popular than the NPL and eventually earn approval from
the Open Source Initiative.[20]
Less than a year later, Baker and the Mozilla Organization would make some changes to the
MPL, resulting in version 1.1, a minor update.[21] This revision was done through an open process
that considered comments from both institutional and individual contributors. The primary goals
were to clarify terms regarding patents and allow for multiple licensing. This last feature was
meant to encourage cooperation with developers that preferred stricter licenses like the GPL.[22]
Not only would many projects derive their own licenses from this version, but its structure, legal
precision, and explicit terms for patent rights would strongly influence later revisions of popular
licenses like the GPL (version 3).[15]
Both versions 1.0 and 1.1 are incompatible with the GPL, which led the Free Software
Foundation to discourage using version 1.1.[5] For this reasons, earlier versions of Firefox were
released under multiple licenses: the MPL 1.1, GPL 2.0, and LGPL 2.1.[23] Some old software,
such as the Mozilla Application Suite is still under the three licenses. Therefore, in early 2010,
after more than a decade without modification, an open process for creating version 2.0 of the
MPL began. Over the next 21 months, the MPL was not only changed to make the license clearer
and easier to apply, but also to achieve compatibility with the GPL and Apache licenses.[10][24] The
revision team was overseen by Baker and led by Luis Villa with key support from Gervase
Markham and Harvey Anderson. They would publish three alpha drafts, two beta drafts, and two
release candidates for comment before releasing the final draft of version 2.0 on January 3, 2012.
[10]

Notable users

Adobe Flex[12]
Armadillo

Cairo[25]

Celtx[26]

Eigen[27]

H2 (DBMS)[28]

Internet Systems Consortium[29]

LibreOffice[14]

OpenMRS[30]

Syncthing[31]

Licenses based on pre-MPL 2.0

AROS Public License 1.1 (based on MPL 1.1)

Common Development and Distribution License

Common Public Attribution License

Erlang Public License 1.1[32] (modified MPL 1.0,[33] where "disagreements are settled
under Swedish law in English"[34])

Firebird's Initial Developer's Public License (based on MPL v1.1)[35]

MonetDB Public License (based on MPL 1.1)[36]

Sun Public License

Yahoo! Public License

References
1.
"Mozilla Public License, version 2.0". Mozilla Foundation. Retrieved 28 February 2012.
"Mozilla Public License (MPL)". The Big DFSG-compatible Licenses. Debian Project.
Retrieved 2009-06-06.
"Mozilla Public License (MPL) version 2.0". Various Licenses and Comments about
Them. Free Software Foundation. Retrieved 2012-01-03.
"Open Source Licenses". Open Source Initiative. Retrieved 2012-01-07. Mozilla Public
License 2.0 (MPL-2.0)
"Various Licenses and Comments about Them". Free Software Foundation. Retrieved
2016-08-12.
"MPL 2.0 FAQ". Mozilla Foundation. Retrieved 2016-08-12.
"Open Source Software: a legal guide | LawGives". LawGives. Retrieved 2015-09-08.
St. Laurent, Andrew M. (2004). "3". Understanding Open Source & Free Software
Licensing. O'Reilly Media. pp. 6263. ISBN 978-0-596-00581-8.
"Historical Licensing Documents". Mozilla Foundation. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
"About MPL 2.0: Revision Process and Changes FAQ". Mozilla Foundation. Retrieved
29 February 2012.
"Mozilla Foundation License Policy". Mozilla Foundation. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
"Adobe Flex FAQ: Licensing". Adobe Systems. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
http://standardsandfreedom.net/index.php/2013/01/24/the-meaning-of-the-4-0/
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/license/

 Fontana, Richard (9 January 2012). "The new MPL". Retrieved 1 March 2012.
O'Hara, Keith J.; Kay, Jennifer S. (February 2003). "Open source software and
computer science education" (PDF). Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges. Consortium for
Computing Sciences in Colleges. 18 (3): 34. ISSN 1937-4771. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
Rosen, Lawrence (2004). "7. The Mozilla Public License (MPL)". Open Source Licensing
Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law. Prentice Hall PTR. ISBN 0-13-148787-6.
Andreessen, Marc (18 April 2005). "The Time 100: Mitchell Baker: The "Lizard
Wrangler"". Time Magazine. Time. 165 (16). ISSN 0040-781X. OCLC 1311479.
"Netscape Public License". Netscape Communications. Archived from the original on 27
August 2015. Retrieved 16 August 2016.
Wilson, Rowan (15 November 2011). "The Mozilla Public License - An Overview". OSSWatch. University of Oxford. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
Hecker, Frank (2 April 1999). "Mozilla at One: A Look Back and Ahead". Archived from
the original on 21 April 2008. Retrieved 1 March 2012.
"NPL Version 1.0M FAQ". 24 September 1999. Archived from the original on 21 April
2008. Retrieved 1 March 2012.
"Mozilla Relicensing FAQ". Mozilla Foundation. 14 August 2007. Archived from the
original on 21 April 2008. Retrieved 28 February 2012.
Villa, Luis (29 August 2011). "The Mozilla Public License - almost 2.0 (part 1)".
Opensource.com. Retrieved 16 August 2016.
https://www.cairographics.org/
https://www.celtx.com/license.html
http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/index.php?title=Main_Page#License
http://www.h2database.com/html/license.html
https://www.isc.org/blogs/kea-license-2-0/
http://openmrs.org/2013/04/openmrs-licensing-moves-to-mplv2/
https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/blob/master/LICENSE
http://www.erlang.org/about.html
"ERLANG PUBLIC LICENSE: Version 1.1". This Erlang License is a derivative work of
the Mozilla Public License, Version 1.0.
http://www.erlang.org/static/download/EPL1x0-explained.html
Initial Developer's Public License
36.
MonetDB License

External links

Free software portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mozilla Public License.

Official website
o

Mozilla Public License Version 2.0

Comparison between versions 2.0 and 1.1

Mozilla Public License Version 1.1

Mozilla Public License Version 1.0