Mozilla Public License - Definition and Overview

The Mozilla Public License is an open source and a free software license. It was developed by the Netscape Communications division of America Online, and later control was passed to the Mozilla Foundation. Its main use is as the controlling license for the Mozilla web browser and related software.

Comments from Free Software Foundation

This is a free software license which is not a strong copyleft; unlike the X11 license, it has some complex restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL. That is, a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the MPL cannot legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the MPL for this reason.

However, MPL 1.1 has a provision (section 13) that allows a program (or parts of it) to offer a choice of another license as well. If part of a program allows the GNU GPL as an alternate choice, or any other GPL-compatible license as an alternate choice, that part of the program has a GPL-compatible license.

--http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#MPL

External links

• Mozilla Public License, version 1.1 (http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.html)
• MPL FAQ (http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/mpl-faq.html)
• Promiscuous Source (GPL vs. MPL) (http://www.croftsoft.com/library/tutorials/gplmpl/)

Example Usage of Mozilla