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fantasai | 23 May 2013 08:19

Re: Mozilla and Non-Copyleft Licensing

On 01/22/2013 09:11 PM, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>
>   2) The way WebKit has been used suggests that proprietary-minded
> entities that want to embed a Web engine aren't really that interested
> in contributing to the engineering of the Web-exposed capabilities of
> the engine. (That is, Apple and more recently Google are the companies
> that do the most of the core engine engineering in the case of WebKit.
> The large number of other companies that use WebKit tend to get a free
> ride when it comes to the core features of the engine and they focus
> their engineering efforts on porting the engine to their environment.)
> That is, perhaps the idea that proprietary-minded embedders would
> improve the guts of Gecko was wishful thinking all along.

I just wanted to correct this point; there are efforts by embedders
in East Asia to improve core WebKit capabilities, because the layout
engine doesn't serve their needs. I've also encountered a Gecko
embedder who patched our layout engine, because they needed something
fixed for their use cases.

Which brings up the point that, if the existing product is sufficient,
an embedder won't put any effort into the core. But if their needs
are not met, they will work on it.

I think whether the patches get reintegrated into the main depends
mostly on the ease or difficulty of upstreaming patch. Licensing
aside, there are definite benefits (maintainability) to not maintaining
a fork.

~fantasai
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Gervase Markham | 25 Mar 2013 17:45
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Re: Mozilla and Non-Copyleft Licensing

On 14/02/13 14:14, Mike Connor wrote:
> I thought about that, but do we really have a consensus that copyleft is
> preferred by the project as a whole?  

Sorry for the delay in getting back to this. I've been trying to talk to
Mitchell, and she's very busy :-) I spoke to her this morning about it.

> of consensus, I am reluctant to enshrine any preference in an official
> policy.

The bottom line is that up to now we have been "MPL 2.0 only", and this
proposal is already a significant liberalization of that policy. To put
it another way, official policy already enshrines a preference. Further
liberalizations would require community-wide support for them to be
demonstrated.

So if you want to get together a coalition of people to make the case
for a further change, you are welcome to do that. But for now, we are
going to stick with my original proposal with a modified sentence 5:

"New Mozilla-originated software projects may choose either the MPL 2.0
or the Apache License 2.0. No other license is acceptable. When
integrating with, building on or relating to an existing codebase, the
license of that codebase should be chosen. Otherwise, the licensing team
recommends MPL 2.0 for client-side code, and either for server-side
code. Please consult the licensing team before going against its
recommendations."

Gerv
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Asa Dotzler | 19 Feb 2013 20:56
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Re: Mozilla and Non-Copyleft Licensing

On 2/18/2013 10:15 AM, Gervase Markham wrote:
> On 17/02/13 04:49, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>> Why this line "No other license is acceptable"? Or from your original
>> post "We should clearly and by name forbid the use of other licenses for
>> Mozilla-originated codebases, without specific permission and in
>> exceptional circumstances"?
>>
>> Is this solely about the requirement for the patent protection clause?
>
> That was the driver, yes. Would you prefer a more nuanced expression?
>
> Gerv
>

Nope. I'm good.

- A
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Gervase Markham | 18 Feb 2013 19:15
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Re: Mozilla and Non-Copyleft Licensing

On 17/02/13 04:49, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> Why this line "No other license is acceptable"? Or from your original
> post "We should clearly and by name forbid the use of other licenses for
> Mozilla-originated codebases, without specific permission and in
> exceptional circumstances"?
> 
> Is this solely about the requirement for the patent protection clause?

That was the driver, yes. Would you prefer a more nuanced expression?

Gerv
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Asa Dotzler | 17 Feb 2013 06:00
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Re: Mozilla and Non-Copyleft Licensing

On 2/16/2013 8:49 PM, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> On 2/13/2013 8:46 AM, Gervase Markham wrote:
>> Having taken in the various viewpoints, I suggest the next step is a
>> concrete proposal. Here is one.
>>
>> We should update the Mozilla License Policy[0]. On the particular topic
>> of which license to choose for a new project, it should say:
>>
>> "New Mozilla-originated software projects may choose either the MPL 2.0
>> or the Apache License 2.0. No other license is acceptable. When
>> integrating with, building on or relating to an existing codebase, the
>> license of that codebase should be chosen. Otherwise, the licensing team
>> recommends MPL 2.0 for client-side code, and either for server-side
>> code. However, the decision should be taken on a case-by-case basis in
>> consultation with the licensing team."
>>
>> Gerv
>>
>> [0] http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/license-policy.html
>>
>
> Why this line "No other license is acceptable"? Or from your original
> post "We should clearly and by name forbid the use of other licenses for
> Mozilla-originated codebases, without specific permission and in
> exceptional circumstances"?
>
> Is this solely about the requirement for the patent protection clause?
>
> - A
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Gervase Markham | 14 Feb 2013 13:03
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Re: Mozilla and Non-Copyleft Licensing

On 13/02/13 21:55, tofumatt wrote:
> These folks are developers, not lawyers. I'm very much the same way
> when it comes to licensing; I don't want to bother with it at all and
> just do it for my personal projects out of necessity. Check out this
> post -- a developer just wants to give something away and people go
> on and on about the legal stuff.

I sympathise with those who would rather code than care about licensing.
Unfortunately, the world does not work the way many of us would like it
to work, and restrictive you-cant-do-anything copyright is the default.

(See
http://tieguy.org/blog/2013/01/27/taking-post-open-source-seriously-as-a-statement-about-copyright-law/
for an interesting comment on this.)

> The reason Apache is unacceptable is because it's not what they use
> or want to deal with. The same way most Ruby libraries are MIT, most
> Python is BSD, and that makes it pretty headache-free for developers
> who just want to write code.

See Will's data. Things are more heterogeneous than you think.

I hope also that other BSD/MIT-tending communities will read the state
of the world the same way we do, and move towards Apache 2.0 as the best
non-copyleft license available.

> Especially when a lot of the stuff we ship are libraries and
> application templates (think Mortar), non-copyleft licensing saves
> people headaches. That's a sign of truly great software: it solves
> problems without creating more. We should do the same with licensing
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Gervase Markham | 14 Feb 2013 12:50
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Re: Mozilla and Non-Copyleft Licensing

On 13/02/13 22:07, Wraithan (Chris McDonald) wrote:
> It isn't a case of unacceptable. It is a case of standing out and being
> different in ways that one is not aiming to be. Showing up at a laid
> back conference like BarCamp wearing a suit when you go to run a session
> is not unacceptable but definitely does not fit in either.

I think Will's very interesting data shows that you won't be standing
out too much. :-) Perhaps it's the equivalent of wearing chinos instead
of jeans.

> It is one of the points we were making. And if this is the best we can
> do then at least it is better than completely tying our hands and making
> us use MPL for everything. Part of our hiring process and fit for
> Mozilla is that we are good community members. We have strong ties to
> our communities we come from and as such want to continue to maintain
> their status quo rather than forcing our corporations ideas in.

Hence the discussion on changing the licensing policy. The flipside of
your point above is that we, as a respected open source project, want to
be promoting responsible licensing practice. We need to read the signs
of the times, which indicate that the software patent wars are going to
get worse before they get better. Where Mozilla leads, others follow
(see e.g. LibreOffice's adoption of the MPL 2). Which is why the
licensing team feels strongly that we should, going forward, only use
licenses with explicit patent clauses - because it helps us, and
encourages others to do the same.

Allowing Apache 2.0 into the mix is an attempt to do that, and also do
our best to meet the requirements of some communities for non-copyleft
licensing. Mozilla's community license is the MPL 2, but we understand
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Gervase Markham | 14 Feb 2013 12:41
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Re: Mozilla and Non-Copyleft Licensing

On 13/02/13 23:34, Mike Connor wrote:
> I don't think it should be necessary to consult with licensing <at>  if a
> project is choosing one of the two acceptable licenses.  This strikes
> me as unnecessary overhead and friction, when the policy should
> strive for the minimum necessary work needed to comply.  Project
> owners should be free to choose either of the acceptable licenses
> based on their own circumstances.
> 
> On that principle, I would propose that we simply adopt the first
> three sentences of the above text, and cut the rest.

Fair point. First four sentences? :-)

Gerv
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Gervase Markham | 13 Feb 2013 22:40
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Re: Mozilla and Non-Copyleft Licensing

On 13/02/13 21:10, Wraithan (Chris McDonald) wrote:
> Can't say I am keen on this. we are taking away the ability for us to
> license things to fit into the community they are being built for? BSD
> being the way of the vast majority of python/django projects. 

It would be great if you could help us understand why Apache (which is,
in legal effect, BSD with a patent clause) is unacceptable to that
community.

> It appears none of the discussion made any difference because you've
> gone right back to what you were originally arguing for. 

My understanding was that the web dev team were keen on non-copyleft
licensing, which the licensing policy didn't allow; formally enabling
that was what this discussion was all about. If that's not the point you
were making, then there's been some miscommunication.

> I've CC'd webdev as there are a lot of us who feel strongly on this and
> the email didn't go out to all of them.

I did my best to get people involved in the discussion, including a
specific email written to the webdev list to come and get involved. If
webdevs aren't reading the webdev list, then could I politely suggest
their community engagement needs a little polishing?

Gerv
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Gervase Markham | 23 Jan 2013 15:06
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Re: Mozilla and Non-Copyleft Licensing

On 22/01/13 13:11, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 6:06 PM, Gervase Markham <gerv <at> mozilla.org> wrote:
>> The MPL was created as an intermediate stage between the copyleft of the
>> GPL and the non-copyleft of licences like the BSD license. It has served
>> us well in that role for many years.
> 
> Served us well in what sense? What code contributions has Mozilla
> gotten because of copyleft in MPL? What code contributions Mozilla
> thinks it should have gotten but didn't get despite of MPL?

I'm not sure one could say the MPL was the tipping factor one way or the
other for a particular contribution. I can try and answer the related
question, "why is the MPL's particular brand of copyleft strength a good
choice for Mozilla?"

I think the answer to that is that the file-level copyleft sets up a
community expectation of sharing more than permissive licenses do, while
not prohibiting proprietary derivatives in the way stronger copyleft
licenses do. Some, of course, may not agree with the first half of that.

> I didn't follow the Flock case at the time. Is there a postmortem
> analyzing the Flock case and whether Mozilla's licensing policy
> resulted in outcomes Mozilla wanted in that case?

I've not seen an explicit post-mortem. I did not carefully study Flock's
licensing, but my understanding from others is that they took
tri-licensed code and made it GPL-only to prevent Mozilla from
reincorporating their changes. (Of course, there's still the question of
whether we'd have wanted to take their changes.) This is unfriendly, but
then the MPL itself is designed to allow proprietary derivative works
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Gervase Markham | 23 Jan 2013 14:31
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Re: Mozilla and Non-Copyleft Licensing

On 23/01/13 12:10, Gervase Markham wrote:
> Thank you, all 3 of you, for taking the time to think about this; but
> could you repost in mozilla.governance, as I am trying to keep the
> conversation in one place?

Sorry, this is all wrong. Ignore this message.

Gerv
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Gmane