Mozilla Public License

The Mozilla Public License (MPL ) is an open - source license and was developed by the company Netscape in 1998 for the code release of the then planned Netscape Communicator 5. Version 1.0 was designed by Mitchell Baker, while she was working as a lawyer for Netscape version 1.1 by the Mozilla Foundation.

Its main field of application is the licensing of the Mozilla web browser and associated software. It has since been adapted by others for their software, such as Sun Microsystems as Common Development and Distribution License for OpenSolaris.

The MPL is considered " very weak copyleft" license, and is sometimes referred to as a compromise between the GNU General Public License ( GPL) and the BSD license considered, even if the MPL has restrictions that go beyond the two licenses. Basically, altered or copied source files must remain under the MPL, but should be used along with proprietary code for a program. Thus, a proprietary version of under the MPL open source programs are published - for example, the Netscape Navigator Version 6, which is a proprietary version of the corresponding Mozilla Suite and Mozilla Firefox. A strong copyleft like the GPL does not have the MPL.

MPL vs. GNU (L ) GPL

In addition to many - sometimes significant - minor differences, the LGPL and the MPL differ in what counts as part of that, and what may have proprietary or an incompatible license. In the LGPL LGPL code must continue to complete independently " functional " or be compilable. When MPL is crucial that the source files are available individually, either under the MPL or not. This is a very poor condition, in particular as individual objects can always have a different file. In the MPL, the code can be so integrated in proprietary, that it is almost impossible to separate them.

Since the MPL is incompatible with the (L ) GPL, especially in the opinion of Free Software Foundation ( FSF), Mozilla provides its programs also under the GNU Lesser General Public License and the GPL ready. Also others followed this example, for example AOL, which publishes the AOLserver also under the GPL.

MPL and Debian

The MPL is DFSG -compliant. Since the MPL requires that the source code must be only six months after the distribution to which this was, however, fiercely debated within the Debian project. This function is, however, guaranteed by snapshot.debian.org, therefore, this presents no problem

In the Mozilla projects, however - including Firefox and Thunderbird - are the logos as opposed to the rest of the program proprietary. Since their use is one of the prerequisites for the use of the trademarks of Mozilla, using some Linux distributions other logos, including Debian and Gentoo also optional.

585029
de