MPL 2.0 has been the preferred license for CTO Bryan Cantrill and crew for more than a decade:
“And because any conversation about open source has to address licensing at some point or another, let’s get that out of the way: we opted for the Mozilla Public License 2.0. While relatively new, there is a lot to like about this license: its file-based copyleft allows it to be proprietary-friendly while also forcing certain kinds of derived work to be contributed back; its explicit patent license discourages litigation, offering some measure of troll protection; its explicit warranting of original work obviates the need for a contributor license agreement (we’re not so into CLAs); and (best of all, in my opinion), it has been explicitly designed to co-exist with other open source licenses in larger derived works. Mozilla did terrific work on MPL 2.0, and we hope to see it adopted by other companies that share our thinking around open source!”
Although not explicitly stated there are like deeper roots here “The one important exception to these generalizations is Sun Microsystems' CDDL, which was a true improvement on MPL 1.1, and which continues to cover a substantial amount of important open source software. … I encourage Oracle, the current CDDL steward, to consider relicensing its CDDL code under MPL 2.0, which is as worthy a successor to CDDL 1.0 as it is to MPL 1.1.” from Richard Fontana’s article at the time of the MPL 2.0 release, https://opensource.com/law/12/1/the-new-mpl
With its compatibility with strong, older copyright licenses I’m surprised the license has not had more widespread adoption. It is a not too hot, not too cold porridge of a file level copyleft and CYA OSS license with the strong backing of Mozilla.
The topic, but not this exception, is touched on in
“Your Brain: Who's in Control? | Full Documentary | NOVA | PBS“
Episode 2 of a two-part series, premiered May 24, 2023. Both episodes are fascinating and eye opening.
I don’t doubt it, but the post does not lay out the timeline. Those events likely aligned the business interests to what the designers were already wanting to make happen. From what I recall, by 2004, Linux on Desktop designers were already looking to move on from mimic and displace Windows to win on their own terms. There seemed to be a lot of energy do something new and different by 2005. It seemed like there was a lot of wireframes and prototypes in both GNOME and KDE camps. Also around 2005, touchscreen tablets were also having a moment. I think I remember a popular Nokia model. 2006 had Sugar UI for interactive learning on OLPC XO.
I am going from memory. I can anchor the memories as September 2005 till early 2006 as it was a memorable time for me. I spent that time working out of a Palo Alto garage working on a "web 2.0" web browser, Flock, with a small group of people that included a few who had previously been at Eazel and were still passionate GNOME participants.
Thinking further on it now, unrelated to that work, Jeff Waugh @jdub would be person I'd go to for receipts.
If I was searching the web, I'd be looking for references to Gnome ToPaZ with topaz being a play on ThreePointZero:
"When the prospect of GNOME 3 was first discussed by developers in 2005, the concept took on a life of its own among the users who imagined that it would be an audacious reinvention of the desktop with completely new interaction paradigms and a new kind of user interface. This pie-in-the-sky vision was referred to as ToPaZ, word play on the phrase three-point-zero. "
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2008/07/gnome...
"So, the GNOME people have started to focus on questions such as universal access, so if you have motor difficulties or other disabilities, software still should be usable. Likewise, it shouldn't matter what language you use
or character set you need, software should be usable.
Part of Galago and Telepathy comes from getting
beyond questions of windows, menus, icons and
pointers and focusing on the things people really care
about. In Jeff's view, these things are people, events,
documents and sex. When questions of when GNOME 3.0
will be released arose, people have suggested it was a
stupid idea. So Jeff came up with TOPAZ, taking the
first letters from Three Point Zero and inserting some
vowels. TOPAZ is not planned for release at this time."
I came here to ask the same thing. What were the disadvantages of using the Mozilla Corporation? Will Thunderbird be the only offering in MZLA Technologies Corporation?
https://nomedium.dev/ is a new site, where the author describes what he doesn’t like about Medium including “ When sharing a Medium article, there is a high degree of uncertainty that the person opening the link will be asked to pay money to read the content.”
