Google Reverses "Absurd" Mozilla Code Ban

Barence writes "Google has reversed its decision to ban projects created under the Mozilla Public License from being hosted on its Google Code site. Google banned the license in August, claiming it wanted to 'make a statement against open-source license proliferation' which it blamed for hindering the cross-pollination of code from one project to another. Chris DiBona, of Google's open source team, described its decision to ban the MPL as 'absurd,' citing the community's huge popularity." Jamie mentions that the issue was raised from the floor at OSCON at the Google Open Source Update panel, with DiBona on stage.

Re:Boycott Vibrant in-frame popups

[Anonymous Coward]

I use adblock and noscript too. And I think that your scheme has one minor flaw, I'm not paying you any thing, and neither is anyone else.

Re:Multi-license !

[badboy_tw2002]

No, that's what Free Software is about. Public domain is most definately "open source" but depending on who you ask is not Free.

Re:proliferation?

[Anonymous Coward]

None of those licenses are duplicates.

GPL v2 is still the most common of the free software licenses. Aside, perhaps, from BSD-style open source licenses, there's no more common open source license.

The LGPL is similar to the GPL v2, but has the all important linking exception. Can't really get rid of this one either. Besides, it's compatible with GPL v2 by design, so doesn't contribute to the license proliferation problem.

GPL v3 is, again, already extremely common. It's slightly different than GPL v2, and incorporates things like the LGPL linking exception as options. It has different goals than the GPL v2, and most GPL v2 projects are compatible with GPL v3 code (except the GPL2-only ones like Linux). Again, not a problem.

The specific licenses they were talking about, like the MPL or EPL, are extremely similar to other licenses, with the exact same goals, but are typically only used by a group of closely connected projects, and differ just enough to make them incompatible with other licenses. That's the problem Google were referring to.

Same goes for most other corporate-sponsored (YPL, CDDL), or project-specific licenses.

Aside from the GPL family, the only other options they had until now were all BSD-based licenses, which are all cross-compatible.

Re:Meh

[Vexorian]

Yep, It's probably only you who thinks like that, most likely because you are utterly wrong. Did you bother reading the licenses at all? The conclussion you took makes no sense.

these licences are just a way of developers saying "I want my slice of the pie also"

having to pay the author for commercial use or whatever

No free software license has that clause, it breaks the def of free software.

Remember kids, try getting informed before posting stuff in the interweb.

Re:Meh

[Grey Ninja]

Do you even know what the GPL or BSD licenses require the user to do? Here's a hint for you. There's no money involved. In fact, you are explicitly allowed to sell the product. The main thing that the GPL prohibits you from doing is to distribute the product without also distributing the source code. And this isn't to get a "piece of the pie". This is to ensure that the code that you freed... remains free.

Regardless, it sounds like you might prefer the BSD license. I'll leave figuring out what that means to you.

Re:Multi-license !

[Vexorian]

However the GPL does not forbid commercial usage of code, and thiking it does and posting about how it does so in web boards is just prima facie lameness .

Re:Multi-license !

[Atlantis-Rising]

Code placed in the public domain does fulfill all of those qualities. Derivatives may or may not, but that's a different issue he wasn't talking about.

And really, the ability to make non-free derivatives is a freedom too.

Re:People still use Subversion?

[S.O.B.]

Real men think PVCS is junk.

Re:Well, Google does have a point..

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's a million "open source" licenses (which there are), it can become virtually impossible for code to move between projects with different licensing.

Chris Dibona is known for actively working against licenses such as the GPL and MPL that guarantee openness of source code. In promoting this agenda he has alienated himself and Google from a significant part of the open source community.

In a related policy, only Subversion, which uses the non-copyleft Apache license favored by Dibona, is allowed on the code.google.com project hosting site. Git, mercurial and every other modern open source version control system are permanently banned. Do not bother asking about it, it is a faq item that only Subversion will be supported, in spite of its deficiencies. [vertigosoftware.com]

Google/Dibona says: "Why aren't you offering my favorite tool? We want our collaborative development environment to be simple, fast, reliable, and scalable, so we only offer tools that are aligned with those goals. But this is hardly credible. Both GIT and Mercurial are faster, more reliable, more scalable and more simple than Subversion, which is apparently favored only because of license prejudice, or perhaps because Dibona shares his office with Greg Stein, the Subversion developer.