Using precompiled MPL licensed libraries or executables

[ramon.fe...@gmail.com]

I have a question regarding MPL 2.0 and I want to make sure we are doing it right. Hopefully somebody of you guys have an answer for me.

We (my team and I) are developing a new software which is copyright protected and we cannot make the source code available to the public. Now we would like to use a couple functions of a precompiled 3rd party library (tool) which is licensed under MPL.

My understanding is that we do not have to put our own software also under MPL and we do not have to provide our source to the public. It should be enough if the source of the 3rd party tool is available.

From: https://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/FAQ.html#distribute-other-peoples-binaries

Is my understanding correct or do you have any other comments?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Ramon

[Gervase Markham]

On 15/01/15 12:55, ramon.fe...@gmail.com wrote:
> We (my team and I) are developing a new software which is copyright
> protected and we cannot make the source code available to the public.
> Now we would like to use a couple functions of a precompiled 3rd
> party library (tool) which is licensed under MPL.

By "use a couple of functions", do you mean "call the tool on the
command line", "take some code files and link them into our
application", "copy some code from MPLed files into files of our code"
or something else?

> My understanding is that we do not have to put our own software also
> under MPL and we do not have to provide our source to the public. It
> should be enough if the source of the 3rd party tool is available.

If you are calling the tool on the command line, that's certainly true.
Even for closer relationships, it can be true. But remember you are
responsible for making the source available to people to whom you give
the binaries. Relying on a 3rd party or upstream service for this is
dangerous because if it goes down, you are in trouble.

Gerv

[ramon.fe...@gmail.com]

Thank you for your reply. To your questions: We develop a .NET application and just reference a 3rd party DLL which is under MPL license and we use/call functions of this DLL. We don't copy, improve, extend or modify code of the 3rd party DLL. We take it as it is.

>From my point of view we only have to make sure the source of the 3rd party DLL is available because this is the part which is licensed under MPL.

Thanks,
Ramon

[Gervase Markham]

On 16/01/15 08:52, ramon.fe...@gmail.com wrote:
>> From my point of view we only have to make sure the source of the
>> 3rd party DLL is available because this is the part which is
>> licensed under MPL.

Yes, that is correct.

Gerv