History
Version 1.0 of the MPL was written by Mitchell Baker in 1998 while working as a high-ranking lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape was hoping an open source strategy for developing their own Netscape web browser would allow them to compete better with Microsoft's browser, Internet Explorer. To cover the browser's code, the company drafted a license known as the Netscape Public License (NPL), which included a clause allowing even openly developed code to be theoretically relicensed as proprietary. The possibility of Netscape accepting code from others only to claim it exclusively with a new license received wide criticism from the open source community. However, at the same time, Baker developed a second license similar to the NPL, but with copyleft features to ensure contributions remained open source. It was called the Mozilla Public License after Netscape's project name for the new open source codebase, and although it was originally only intended for software that supplemented core modules covered by the NPL, it would become much more popular than the NPL and eventually earn approval from the Open Source Initiative.
Less than a year later, Baker and the Mozilla Organization would make some changes to the MPL, resulting in version 1.1, a minor update. This revision was done through an open process that considered comments from both institutional and individual contributors. The primary goals were to clarify terms regarding patents and allow for multiple licensing. This last feature was meant to encourage cooperation with developers that still preferred stricter licenses like the GPL. Not only would many projects derive their own licenses from this version, but its structure, legal precision, and explicit terms for patent rights would strongly influence later revisions of popular licenses like the GPL (version 3).
In early 2010, after more than a decade without modification, an open process for creating version 2.0 of the MPL began. Over the next 21 months, the MPL was not only changed to make the license clearer and easier to apply, but also to achieve compatibility with the GPL and Apache licenses. The revision team was overseen by Baker and led by Luis Villa with key support from Gervase Markham and Harvey Anderson. They would publish three alpha drafts, two beta drafts, and two release candidates for comment before releasing the final draft of version 2.0 on January 3, 2012.
Read more about this topic: Mozilla Public License
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