Mozilla Relicensing

Gervase Markham

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Jan 7, 2004, 6:24:27 PM1/7/04

to Trent Mick, st...@mozilla.org

It Begins.

After over two years of work, we finally have all the permissions
(nearly 450) necessary to relicense the Mozilla codebase under the
MPL/LGPL/GPL tri-license.[0]

During the 1.7a and 1.7b cycles, I will be running an automated Python
relicensing tool, originally written by Scott Collins and now maintained
by Trent Mick at ActiveState, over all the relevant directories in the
Mozilla codebase.[1] This should change whatever license is present to a
properly-formatted MPL tri-license block, retaining all the contributor
and copyright information.

You can help by doing the following:

1) Advising me on a sensible order to do the directories in, so that I
minimise the number of times developers have to rebuild the world
because I've "changed" files. Please comment in the newsgroups.

2) Keeping an eye out for mistakes made either by me or the tool. If you
see anything suspicious, let me know by email.

3) Keeping a lid on things. Really obvious but important point: the
relicensing is _not_done_yet_. Please don't do anything that may make
misleading news stories appear (like "Mozilla is now GPL"). When we've
finished, we'll say so, and do a FAQ and probably a press release so
no-one gets misinformed.

4) Getting ready to party. :-)

Gerv

[0] Well, there's a small handful of files left where we can't find the
person, or negotiations are ongoing. But nothing important.

[1] http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/relicensing-faq.html#to-be-relicensed

David Tenser

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Jan 8, 2004, 6:48:55 AM1/8/04

to

On 2004-01-08 00:24 Gervase Markham wrote:
> It Begins.
>
> After over two years of work, we finally have all the permissions
> (nearly 450) necessary to relicense the Mozilla codebase under the
> MPL/LGPL/GPL tri-license.[0]
>

> 4) Getting ready to party. :-)

For us who haven't really had the time/energy to understand all about
these licenses, what does this change mean (and why party about it)? :)

/ David

Alex Bishop

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Jan 8, 2004, 5:00:10 PM1/8/04

to

David Tenser wrote:

> For us who haven't really had the time/energy to understand all about
> these licenses, what does this change mean (and why party about it)? :)

It means that developers of Mozilla-based products will be able to
choose whether they want to use the code under the terms of the Mozilla
Public License, the General Public License or the Lesser General Public
License. More options basically and less chance of someone rejecting the
Mozilla platform because they object to the license.

Gory details: http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/relicensing-faq.html

Alex

--
Alex Bishop
al...@mozillazine.org
http://www.mozillazine.org/

David Tenser

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Jan 8, 2004, 5:37:30 PM1/8/04

to

On 2004-01-08 23:00 Alex Bishop wrote:
> David Tenser wrote:
>
>> For us who haven't really had the time/energy to understand all about
>> these licenses, what does this change mean (and why party about it)? :)
>
>
> It means that developers of Mozilla-based products will be able to
> choose whether they want to use the code under the terms of the Mozilla
> Public License, the General Public License or the Lesser General Public
> License. More options basically and less chance of someone rejecting the
> Mozilla platform because they object to the license.
>
> Gory details: http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/relicensing-faq.html
>
> Alex
>

Thanks Alex

Gervase Markham

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Jan 29, 2004, 6:59:50 PM1/29/04

to

Gervase Markham wrote:
> 1) Advising me on a sensible order to do the directories in, so that I
> minimise the number of times developers have to rebuild the world
> because I've "changed" files. Please comment in the newsgroups.

We are beginning with xpinstall. The diff is attached to this bug:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=232131
Please comment if you have issues with the way the script is doing things.

Gerv