Help on Open source controls in commercial application.

Question

What are the implications of including a set of visual components released under a Mozilla Public License in a commercial application.

Do I have any obligations?

Answer 1

I've found pretty good analysis on MPL (and others) by Frank Hecker here:

http://hecker.org/writings/setting-up-shop (search for "Mozilla Public License")

This pretty much sums it up:

For MozPL-ed source code considered as a set of source files, modifications of the original source files are considered to also fall under the MozPL, as are new source files incorporating extracts from the original source files. Such modified or new files are required to be licensed under the same terms as the original files, and in particular must be made freely and publicly available in source form.

...

Thus an open-source product initially released under the MozPL may be extended with proprietary code to create new proprietary products, as long as the proprietary code is separate (i.e., in separate files) and interacts with the open-source code using a defined API.

But as usual, read it carefully and consult your lawyers.

Answer 2

The only problem is if you modify the components you must release them under Mozilla Public License as well