Re: Mozilla Public License is non-free: stipulates court venue ?

["Lex Spoon" <lex@cc.gatech.edu>]

MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
> > I'm afraid that is a revisionist interpretation.  First, Mozilla is
> > certainly intended to be "Open Source", which is essentially the same 
> > as
> > what Debian means by "free":
> 
> The jury seems out on that. They could mean *anything* by "Open 
> Source". http://mjr.towers.org.uk/writing/ambigopen.html
> 
> Even assuming they mean OSI's OSD and not whatever fuzzy idea, OSI 
> seem to have a very different process to Debian and don't seem 
> concerned with the four freedoms at all. 

In this case Mozilla/Netscape seems to really mean the usual old open
source.  They wanted people, from the beginning, to use, modify, and
redistribute the source code to the Netscape web browser.

Here's ESR's take on that situation:

	http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/a
r01s13.html
	

Here's what the Mozilla FAQ says about their open-ness:

"1.1. For whom is Mozilla 1.5 intended?

    Mozilla 1.5 is for everyone. And we mean everyone. Mozilla is open
source, which means it is made possible by a large community of
developers, supporters, and users like you. While you enjoy our
software, please consider joining and contributing to the Mozilla
community.

    We also welcome anybody to freely alter and redistribute Mozilla
under the terms of the Mozilla Public Licence."
  -- http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.5/faq/general.html#audience


Note that GPL gets no mention at all, and that MPL is treated as the
vehicle for the openness.


Finally, here it is from Netscape themselves:

"On January 22, 1998, in another unprecedented move, Netscape announced
that it would make the source code to its flagship client software,
Netscape Communicator, freely available for modification and
redistribution on the Internet."
    -- http://wp.netscape.com/browsers/future/whitepaper.html



-Lex