Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 9:31 PM
You might remember that we recently removed the MPL from the list of licenses available to projects hosted on Google Code. We did this because we have been trying as a company to make a statement against open source license proliferation. You see, we feel it is damaging to the larger world of open source development if there are too many duplicative licenses. So...Why are we changing our mind about the MPL and EPL now?
Since we started hosting projects, we've been petitioned by the Eclipse Foundation (of which Google is a member) and its community of developers to include the EPL as an option for new projects. We've resisted until now as we felt that the features of the EPL were not unique enough to justify its inclusion. This hasn't changed, but how we think about licenses is getting a bit more nuanced.
Eclipse is an important, lively and healthy project with an enormous plug in and developer community that uses an otherwise duplicative license. They aren't interested in using the BSD or other open source licenses that are readily combinable with EPL code. We have decided that after nearly 2 years of operation, that it was time to add the EPL and serve these open source developers.
We also want to show our solidarity with our friends at the Eclipse project through this action.
Considering the user base, and not just the popularity of an otherwise non-majority license isn't unprecedented for us. For instance: We considered this when we first opened the site in our acceptance of the Artistic/GPLv2 combination which sees little substantive use outside of Perl.
In that light, our removal of the MPL from the site seemed a little absurd. So, our bad. We're putting that option back up for new projects. The groups that want to use the MPL to enable their additions, extensions and more for Firefox and other Mozilla projects are legion and considering their recent summit, represent a very healthy global collection of developers.
Let us know what you think in the comments and we look forward to seeing the new projects that we'll be able to serve here on Google Code.
19 comments:
What about the AGPL? It might not be that big yet, but it is the license of the future, truly free/open network services.
Sensible decisions, Chris - good to see you change your mind so fast in the face of comment.
@Webmink: It wasn't fast in the case of the EPL, it took about 2 years, after all. MPL was just a mistake.
@Eetu: AGPL still hasn't seen the uptake we're looking for. Sorry.
I'll be waiting with Eetu for the AGPL.
Chris,
This is great news. We appreciate Google's ongoing support of the Eclipse community.
Thanks Chris, OSPO and project hosting team - we have really been waiting for this.
Chris, This is very much appreciated! Thanks from all of us in the Eclipse community.
Man, I wish every company was as down to earth and human. And genuine, direct, and transparent.
Perhaps Google should run for president in 2012
This is a prime example of politics running the open source community in my opinion, where it becomes not what you know or what you are doing, but who you know and what you've chosen to align yourself. In a logical perspective, I'd like to point out that this is not unlike more primitive styles of culture where religion and/or anarchy rules, and it can be seen as quite discriminatory to those who are "on the outside looking in".
As an example, I co-author an open source project, Blood Frontier, which is based on Cube Engine 2, the license for which is zlib/libpng, which is an Open Source Initiative approved licensed, and one we chose to keep. As a result, when trying to adopt Google's hosting, I hit quite a brick wall when it came to this license. It seems to me, it isn't for a company to decide what open source is or isn't. Who appointed Google OSS watchdog? I certainly didn't get to participate in any discussion about that.
I guess all I am saying is, Google in all its greatness, really disappointed me there with what I see as a form of discrimination. In alot of cases, projects (or its developers) have no choice over the licensing of their work, it is usually determined a long time ago by some library, or legacy code long ago evolved. Licensing is just that, a license to use the product, we can't be going around changing something that doesn't belong to us to suit the whim of one group, and I really do hope somebody understands that.
'absurd' thts the right word. But I agree with your concern about proliferation of open source licenses. After all its all about being open right ? I am still trying to understand licensing in open source. Might be there is a better way to do this without 'banning' (communist) stuff. After we all are free world :)
The AGPL is designed to stop web companies taking open-source code, and making unpublished closed derivatives for their own web apps.
Given that Google is so big on web apps, the anti-AGPL stance could look a bit sinister, though I understand that probably isn't Google's intent.
@quin I think this would be an much bigger problem if we were the only hosting site. SF welcomes all the licenses, right now, so maybe they can help you? In the meantime, I'm sorry we disappointed you, but we feel pretty strongly about this.
> AGPL still hasn't seen the uptake we're looking for. Sorry.
I am aware of a fair number of projects using AGPL now; how many are needed before Google approves it? Or is it in terms of LOC? Or number of community members? Can you explain your metrics please Chris, I'm sure I'm not the only person who'd like to understand.
@webmink I think we have a different definition of 'fair number' the uptake has been slow no matterhow you measure it. Mind you I also take into account proportionality. Compare the number of projects/communities/locs under mit, bsd, gplv2, gplv3, agpl, epl, mpl etc.. and then the numbers get pretty interesting pretty fast.
If you're genuinely concerned about license proliferation, why do you not allow "public domain" as an option -- surely the optimal solution to the problem, as public domain content is compatible with anything and everything?
Technically speaking, Public Domain is the lack of license, not a license, and there are many industrialized contries that due to thier extensive participation in certain subparts of WIPO, are not able to release software into public domain.
@quin wrote: "Who appointed Google OSS watchdog?" No one did. It is entirely sensible for Google to limit the list of open source licenses on Google Code. It is, after all, entirely free to use and there are many other free alternatives available for you to host your projects under whatever license you want.
Thanks, Google! This came at just the right time too - I am about to start a massive Eclipse project under EPL, and am glad that I can use Google Code instead of Sourceforge now. Cheers :)
As far as I know, MPL is mainly used in the "tri-license" combination used by Mozilla (GPL2/LGPL2.1/MPL. In fact, of widely used software, only Bugzilla uses the MPL by itself.
The MPL is a terrible license in any case, with all kinds of garbage such as submitting to the venue of Santa Clara County. Don't encourage it.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/06/msg00221.html
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