Komodo in violation of Mozilla Public License?

[David Ascher]

Tim Churches wrote:
> 
> Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters wrote:
> >
> > ActiveState Corporation <http://activestate.com/> produces an
> > multi-language/multi-platform IDE called Komodo, which is based on the
> > Mozilla framework.  It is a nice product, overall, based on my tests of
> > the (free) betas.  In the last week, ActiveState has released Komodo
> > 1.0, with a dramatically changed (commercial, for-money, and by
> > subscription) license.  In particular, their Release Notes
> > <http://activestate.com/ASPN/Reference/Products/Komodo/relnotes.html>
> > state that:
> >
> >   Educational license - Komodo is free for educational and
> >     NON-COMMERCIAL purposes.  If you're using Komodo to learn to
> >     program, this is probably the one for you.
> >   Evaluation license - Komodo is free for evaluation purposes, to test
> >     Komodo's features for a short time before full deployment.
> >   Commercial license - Any other use of Komodo must be under the
> >     commercial license.  This gives you full access to regular software
> >     updates and the full power of integration with the Knowledge
> >     Center.
> >
> > While IANAL, and all that... doesn't this look like an awfully blatant
> > violation of the Mozilla Public License (which covers the codebase in
> > Komodo)?!
> >
> > Yours, Lulu...
> 
> Dear Lulu,
> 
> The same unlovely thought occured to me, as I'm sure it did to many
> others. But then I thought, surely a relatively large (in free
> software/open source terms), well-established firm like ActiveState
> wouldn't make a fundamental **legal** mistake like violating the letter
> of the Mozilla licensing agreement, so I suspect that they are using
> some obscure loophole in the license or have done a deal with AOL or
> whoever owns the copyright to the Mozilla codebase to re-license it on a
> commercial basis. It would be great if erstwhile free software/open
> source Python hero David Ascher could enlighten us regarding this issue.

Lots of issues here.  I'll try to adress them in turn, and not be too
long-winded.

  The MPL license.  My understanding of the MPL is that we are not in
violation of any of its terms.  Komodo is not a "new version" of Mozilla
(see below), and all the changes that we have made to Mozilla have been
submitted back to mozilla.org (mostly minor bug fixes).  We have made
one _major_ addition to Mozilla, and that is the PyXPCOM bindings. 
Those were submitted to mozilla.org under the MPL, something which we
were not required to do but wanted to do to further Mozilla
development.  We are active contributors and participants in the Mozilla
effort.  I'll check with Mitchell Baker, chief lizard wrangler at
Mozilla.org, and get back to the list on this issue.
   
    Komodo is not a "fork" of Mozilla but an application based on top of
Mozilla, just like it is an application based on top of Python.  There
are no restrictions (to my knowledge!) in the Mozilla or Python licenses
with regards to the terms under which such applications can be
distributed.  An extreme version of this is that a web page viewed with
Mozilla is, technically, very similar to Komodo ('rendered XUL').  Ours
just happens to be a useful web page =).  We distribute Mozilla as part
of Komodo as a convenience to our customers.  When Mozilla reaches
stability and ubiquity, we will consider removing the "pre-built"
Mozilla and have Komodo just layer on top of existing Mozilla
installations if that is a change our customers ask for.  Just to
emphasize it -- The level of code-sharing between "Komodo" and "Mozilla"
is the same as the level of code-sharing between "eGroups" and "Python"
(probably less -- we don't use coroutines =).

   Mozilla's license was crafted precisely to let all kinds of people
and organizations build all kinds of software with it.  As an example,
IBM recently released their Web Browser for OS/2, which is, like Komodo,
available as part of a for-fee subscription.  Intel, Nokia and others
are building Mozilla-based tools which they have (to my knowledge!) no
intention of releasing.  We did not "strike a deal" with anyone
regarding licensing of Mozilla -- we are just participants in the
Mozilla effort much like hundreds of others.

   Komodo is not Open Source or Free Software, true.  It is a little
confusing to some, but ActiveState's business model is mixed.  We do
some open source work, such as the ports of Python and Perl to Itanium,
PyXPCOM, the Python/Perl bridge for Zope, the Python for .NET project,
etc., as well as commercial work, such as Komodo and Visual Python. 
Just FYI, the most interesting parts of Komodo (the Python, XUL and
JavaScript code) are not obscured in any way, and we do encourage people
to learn how Mozilla works by looking at Komodo's source code.  (We may
"zip" them up in later releases as an optimization, but they'll still be
available for review.)

   Re: educational vs. non-educational licenses.  We believe that by
making what we consider to be useful tools like Komodo available to
students and educators, we can help improve the quality of the
educational process in the computing sciences.  This is important to us
as a company, and is a goal that we are pursuing in various wasy.  We
are always looking for ways to make CP4E a possibility, even though its
federal funding sources have dried up.

   On the subject of whether Komodo "should", in a moral sense, be
FSF-style free or not, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. 
You called me (I presume ironically) "free software/open source Python
hero David Ascher".  I think some open source software is great.  I
think some free software is great.  I also think that some closed-source
software is great.  I tend to judge software based on whether the
software meets the user's needs, and "fits" the user.  For example, the
computer games I buy for my kid are well designed, entertain and educate
him, and their prices are low compared to the value they give me.  I'm
glad to pay for such software, as I know that I encourage the production
of more software that I consider to be of high quality.  It is my hope
and belief that our customers will feel the same way about Komodo.  The
feedback we get seems to indicate that they value the feature-richness,
the attention to QA, and even the nice graphics and "marketing".

    For what it's worth, I think I understand the FSF point of view, and
I respect it, but I do not share it.  The world is big enough for both
approaches, methinks. 

    I apologize for the long post, but there were a lot of issues to
cover.

Cheers, 

David Ascher
Komodo Tech Lead
ActiveState