Mozilla To Re-Write Mozilla Public License

Mozilla Foundation is working on re-writing the The Mozilla Public License (MPL). The redraft seems to address the issue of making MPL Apache compatible in order to enable projects using the MPL become more flexible about using Apache-licensed code.
 
The redraft would also consider the impact of the patent license grant (particularly section 8.2) to reflect modern licensing practice. It will also address the need to globalizing the license, to make it more appropriate for global community of contributors.

The main agenda of redraft seems to stay updated with the contemporary technology world. Mozilla's Scope site says, "Modernize, maintain, and simplify the license. The world has changed in the past ten years, and there are places where we would like to change with it. We also now have ten years of experience with the license which we’ll use to help make it easier to use for everyone. Remain a free and open license. We have already been in touch with the FSF and OSI to ensure that we remain consistent with their principles and policies."
 
The draft of the license is expected to be released by the end of 2010. It may be called MPL v2.0. Version 1.0 was developed by Mitchell Baker. At that time she was working as a lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation. Version 1.1 was developed at the Mozilla Foundation. The MPL is known as a hybrid of modified BSD and GNU General Public License.
 
MPL is used for product released by the Mozilla Foundation which includes the Mozilla Application Suite, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird and other Mozilla software. Many other corporates have use the license in their product, including Sun Microsystems (nor Oracle) for OpenSolaris. Adobe uses MPL for its Flex product line.
 
MPL attracted vendors like Adobe owing to its commercial approach. Phil Costa, director of Product Management for Flex and ColdFusion at Adobe, admitted in an interview, "We looked a little at LGPL. But our own history as a commercial vendor shows that even though the spirit of LGPL is that it can be combined with other things and it doesn’t affect them, in practice a large percentage of ISVs just won’t touch it. Whereas things like MPL, ETL, EPL, those licenses were explicitly designed to be more commercial friendly while still carrying the basic spirit of open source."