[RESOLVED] Does the same problem not exist by a different name?

Posted Jan 4, 2012 23:39 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544)
In reply to: Does the same problem not exist by a different name? by louie
Parent article: Mozilla Public License 2.0 released

OK, I see the logic now. Thanks for that.

For other licences that might copy this approach, I wonder if there are ways to narrow the usage of the "Incompatible" tag... It exists to solve a specific problem (compatibility with some existing code), so I wonder if the problem could be defined in the licence, and the "Incompatible" tag could be allowed only when being used to solve that problem.

I'll look at the patent stuff on Friday, so I'll let you know then if I see any glitches in the redline.

[RESOLVED] Does the same problem not exist by a different name?

Posted Jan 5, 2012 0:22 UTC (Thu) by louie (guest, #3285) [Link]

Some people in the MPL-using community (as distinct from the Mozilla community) do think of that as a genuine feature, and we did not want to prohibit people from being incompatible in such a case.

But again, note the issue of defaults: in the old license, if your purpose for using MPL was to be GPL incompatible, you could simply use the license, and justify use of the license for other reasons (well drafted, liked file-level copyleft, etc.) Your actual intent would be ambiguous.

In contrast, in 2.0, if you are using the license specifically because you want to be GPL-incompatible, you have to publicly and explicitly choose that behavior. So if that's the behavior you want, great, but you have to come out and say it.