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04 April 2011, 12:30

Mozilla's latest MPLv2 draft revises GPL compatibility

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Mozilla Foundation logo The Mozilla Foundation is currently in the process of revising the Mozilla Public Licence to create version 2. It has now released a second beta of the revised licence, rather than a release candidate, as it has a "substantially revised GPL compatibility clause". The Foundation announced the beta 2 version and is seeking further feedback on the changes.

The GPL compatibility change is a move from opt-in to opt-out. This means that developers using the licence will have to add a notice stating the software they are licensing is GPL incompatible, rather than one that says it is GPL compatible. Other changes include some reorganisation of the sections and a clarification of what rights apply to executable forms. "Loser-pays" language, which said that the loser in any litigation would pay the other parties costs "without limitation" was also removed at the suggestion of the Software Freedom Law Center.

The draft is available as a pdfPDF, html or as plain text. Mozilla says it is "seeking participation and commentary from both the Mozilla community and the broader community of MPL and FLOSS users". To enable this, feedback and questions are being accepted through the MPL2 mailing list, while specific textual comments can be added using Mozilla's commenting tool.

(djwm)

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