Komodo in violation of Mozilla Public License?

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters mertz at gnosis.cx
Wed Apr 11 12:43:01 EDT 2001


Thanks to all those who have responded to this inquiry I made about
Komodo and the MPL.  Thanks especially to David Ascher, who provided
some greater details on how Komodo works.

By way of small background, I am only passingly familiar with the
Mozilla project and its internal workings.  I have downloaded and tested
Komodo (in a late beta; and also Warpzilla, Bezilla, and Mozilla/Linux),
but doing so does not particularly clarify the internal relations
between the parts of its code.  When you download and install Komodo,
you install Mozilla as part of the deal.  One tends to assume, at a
passing look, that Komodo is a specialized version of Mozilla.

My current understanding is the following.  Mozilla proper is not
actually part of what Komodo is.  Rather, Mozilla is somewhere between a
library and a server (it implements a component object model called
XPCOM).  Mozilla, as such, is covered by the MPL.  Komodo proper is a
different software package, one that makes XPCOM calls as part of its
functionality.  In principle, one could use a different version of
Mozilla than that included in the Komodo installer; or even (in some
distant future) an alternate implementation of XPCOM.  I doubt such
principled alternatives would be easy to get installed though.  All the
code inside Komodo proper was written by ActiveState; and they therefore
have a legal right to license it under a "pay us $295 per year" license.

In other words, ActiveState is in the clear with the MPL in terms of the
derived source code issue.  That was my primary concern, and an
explanation clears it up.  I do, however, wish that either ActiveState's
webpages, or something in the installer, would make it a bit more clear
what the relation between Komodo and Mozilla is.

A secondary MPL license issue still seems not quite right, however.
Downloading Komodo provides a binary version of Mozilla as part of the
jig.  In doing that, one should receive "prominent notice" (or something
like that) as to how one might obtain the source code for the binary you
are downloading.  It is possible that what I downloaded actually did
have some kind of README buried somewhere concerning this, but if so, it
is easy to miss.  It would also seem rather appropriate to post such
prominent notice somewhere on the web pages that discuss Komodo.  The
impression one gets in reading about Komodo is that it *includes*
Mozilla; and therefore that one is licensing more than one actually is
by buying the commercial subscription.  But the source *is* available at
mozilla.org, in fact, so this is a more minor issue.

However, despite the probable legality of Komodo's license, my own
opinion is that ActiveState would be a lot more likable with a more
community-oriented license.  But that's not law (and "opinions are like
assholes: everyone has one").

Yours, Lulu...

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