UXP and allied Project Contributors.. Your rights are being violated along with the MPL.

[Moonchild]

I think Tobin's cease and desist notice to Feodor2 was uncalled for.

It was most certainly called for because Feodor did not have the right to use, distribute or modify Tobin's authored code after the grant was terminated.
Not only was it called for, it was also the only correct action to take when there was clearly no intent to take it down on his own accord and in fact was contested.

[dbsoft]

By the way, the promised contributor's guide to the MPL is now live at http://developer.palemoon.org/docs/mpl20-guide/

Mostly this is a good document explaining things, but the section about grant termination and transfer of repositories seems to be completely inaccurate. I am not a lawyer, but I have read and reread section 5 of the MPL 2.0 and I cannot see any language in there supporting these claims.

As you clearly state the modifications of the source are owned by the author, they are not necessarily under the terms of the MPL 2.0, they are only under that if the author releases them that way OR they are applied to source code that itself is under the MPL 2.0 already. So the author of the modifications can release them to anyone under whatever terms they see fit. Thus the modified source code is usable by others even if the grant is denied to that person or organization. The grant revocation would only mean the person or organization that had them revoked can't release executables, other entities would be until their grants are revoked. That is my interpretation.

Please quote the parts of the MPL 2.0 that you think support your assertion that any code made by the person or organization that had their grants revoked is tainted and can't be used by or transferred to others.

[Moonchild]

but the section about grant termination and transfer of repositories seems to be completely inaccurate. I am not a lawyer, but I have read and reread section 5 of the MPL 2.0 and I cannot see any language in there supporting these claims.

I suggest you go talk to a lawyer then, because what I stated is accurate to the best of both my knowledge and the knowledge of the legal counsel I talked to.

Source code authored by multiple people is, by definition, code under shared copyright if nothing else applies. That is author rights of any creative work. That is your baseline. If you don't know how shared copyright works, then please research that first. The gist of it is: you can only use, publish, adapt, copy or distribute works under shared copyright (or any part thereof) if you have the appropriate permissions from all authors of the work.
The MPL grants permission to use this code, subject to certain conditions, aside from this baseline of author rights. In that context:

5.1. The rights granted under this License will terminate automatically if You fail to comply with any of its terms.

When that grant is terminated, the permissions fall back to shared copyright because the MPL no longer grants permission for the software to be used under its license terms. This is why I made the preamble clarifying ownership first and foremost. If you don't own it, you don't have the rights to use it unless you have permission (either implicit through the license or explicit through express permission from the owner of code).
The rest of 5.1 provides specifics on when the grant can be reinstated even if you have failed to comply with any of the terms of the license. Read point 5.1 carefully, understand it, and then read the guide again.
If you're still in need of further explanation or are convinced what I wrote is fundamentally flawed after you have talked to a lawyer about it, then by all means let me know exactly where and in what way the guide is "completely inaccurate", in your opinion. If there are any obvious and proven inaccuracies I'll be more than happy to correct them.

As you clearly state the modifications of the source are owned by the author, they are not necessarily under the terms of the MPL 2.0, they are only under that if the author releases them that way OR they are applied to source code that itself is under the MPL 2.0 already.

Well, that is the context in which we are working, here. The document deals with making modifications to MPL licensed code.

So the author of the modifications can release them to anyone under whatever terms they see fit. Thus the modified source code is usable by others even if the grant is denied to that person or organization.

No, they can't, unless they make sure to not include ANY surrounding code that they don't own. So a diff or source file that includes surrounding MPL-licensed code can't be released under just any license. Please use your brain.
The modified source code can't be used, copied or distributed in any way if a grant has been terminated by one of the contributors, unless you get explicit permission from the person who terminated the grant, because, once again, it falls back to the baseline of shared copyright. If you don't have permission from any one of the copyright holders (authors), then that overrules any permission you might otherwise have by other authors. It has to check all the permission boxes, on a file by file basis.

[The Squash]

Guds... I guess we know why there are few forks of enormous open-source projects.

As much as some of you may say, "Just use your brain," licensing can get complicated very quickly when huge masses of millions of lines of code have been double-forked, triple-forked or even more. Not to mention when other licenses get mixed in, like with Google code in Mozilla code that gets carried down into UXP (think of ANGLE, Brotli, Skia, and so many other oddly-named projects). Following licensing is necessary, but clearly it's not easy in certain circumstances...

If only there were a program which automated the discovery of who owns what, and what license it's under. I'm sure that could be done using Git version control logs and the like, if someone tried hard enough.

[Moonchild]

Guds... I guess we know why there are few forks of enormous open-source projects.

Nah, it really isn't complicated. Just stick to the license terms and you won't have to worry about having to find out who wrote what, because permission is implied by the license. The number of times something has been forked doesn't matter, the number of code lines doesn't matter.

As much as some of you may say, "Just use your brain," licensing can get complicated very quickly

Please don't re-apply my expression in a different context. Using your brain is always good, but I stated it that way because it should be painfully obvious that you can't just re-license source material as you see fit just because you modified it... I mean, c'mon!

P.S.: In this case Tobin even made it super easy to know what his modifications were by providing a list of all his commits! So even if that route would have been taken (which it wasn't) then it was all right there, ready to reference.

[The Squash]

don't re-apply my expression in a different context

Ooh, I wasn't consciously trying to ridicule you there! I started writing my post before you had completed your response to dbsoft, so I had no idea of what you wrote at that point. Sorry for the confusion.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

The only way you CAN re-license a specific file that is under the MPL is if you own everything in that file ie you wrote the whole file yourself and no one else has made modifications OR you get express permission from every contributor of said file.

Even then, if the file was previously released as MPL it and contributions there in can still be used under the MPL.

P.S.: In this case Tobin even made it super easy to know what his modifications were by providing a list of all his commits! So even if that route would have been taken (which it wasn't) then it was all right there, ready to reference.

Yeah all 1300+ though that is just a fraction of say Moonchild's many of them were foundational or of an otherwise critical and structual nature with some of it going back 7 years that are still in play to this day.

[dbsoft]

I suggest you go talk to a lawyer then, because what I stated is accurate to the best of both my knowledge and the knowledge of the legal counsel I talked to.

I have in the past but not specifically regarding the MPL 2.0. I will if it becomes necessary, but I suggest you get a contract lawyer to look over your guide before publishing it, because I feel there are some issues with it.

The MPL grants permission to use this code, subject to certain conditions, aside from this baseline of author rights. In that context:

5.1. The rights granted under this License will terminate automatically if You fail to comply with any of its terms.

Each Contributor hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license: under intellectual property rights (other than patent or trademark) Licensable by such Contributor to use, reproduce, make available, modify, display, perform, distribute, and otherwise exploit its Contributions, either on an unmodified basis, with Modifications, or as part of a Larger Work; and under Patent Claims of such Contributor to make, use, sell, offer for sale, have made, import, and otherwise transfer either its Contributions or its Contributor Version.

This grant being revoked does not restrict the distribution of the modifications... especially if they do not touch the code from the contributor revoking the grant.

No, they can't, unless they make sure to not include ANY surrounding code that they don't own. So a diff or source file that includes surrounding MPL-licensed code can't be released under just any license. Please use your brain.
The modified source code can't be used, copied or distributed in any way if a grant has been terminated by one of the contributors, unless you get explicit permission from the person who terminated the grant, because, once again, it falls back to the baseline of shared copyright. If you don't have permission from any one of the copyright holders (authors), then that overrules any permission you might otherwise have by other authors. It has to check all the permission boxes, on a file by file basis.

Again, I would say the same thing to you. Please use your brain. It does not, there is a thing in copyright law called "Fair Use" where you can use excerpts of copyrighted materials which is basically what patches do.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Contributions are defined in the MPL. All modifications are contributions. Patches AREN'T source code nor the Source Code Form in and OF themselves.

If you are just going to try and argue endlessly and turn this into a carbon fucking copy of MyPal Issue 3 (formerly 237) then you can go do that over there. You're not exactly welcome here anymore.

[Tharthan]

Off-topic:

I was honestly shocked to see the responses on r/opensource on Reddit after my post giving a straight-up recount and correct explanation of the situation. Clearly, the crowd there doesn't care about Open Source and just care about taking what isn't theirs regardless if they are following the rules of the game or not...

Sadly, I do not share your shock. I really, really wish that I did.

We have discussed numerous times here on this very forum the various situations across the Web where "what's mine is mine, what isn't mine is mine, and what has yet to even come about is nevertheless mine" has dominated communities, to the point where some of those communities have gotten to be almost rotten to the core.

As such, it sadly does not surprise me that a popular hangout for people who are fond of freedomware is dominated by people who think everything in the entire world ought to be legally in the public domain.

Im fairly certain the FSF did bring the GPL to court, so there are precedents of "copyleft licenses" being defended in an official place.

I would really like to learn of some of the case names, how high up in the courts they've ever gone, and other information that might be fascinating. It would be interesting to see how a higher-level court would handle something of this sort surrounding a highly-technical field as this.

[dbsoft]

Contributions are defined in the MPL. All modifications are contributions. Patches AREN'T source code nor the Source Code Form in and OF themselves.

Not sure if that was directed at me... but I am agreeing with you. Patches aren't source code form and modifications can be contributions when they are added to the original source, but separately they are not.... which is why I agreed with you that just distributing patches is not compliance. Just saying nothing in there says that no one can use the patches if a contributor revokes their grants to the author of the patches.

Moonchild was saying that the snippets of code in the patches that refers to parts of the original MPL 2.0 source makes it a violation to distribute the patches. That is incorrect since fair use allows for portions of a copyrighted work to be used without getting permission from the author if 4 points are met, which would cover source code patches.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

It could be because unless it is a new file or deleting a whole file there is no Exhibit A or any other notification of MPL code. But that also might be nitpicking. But patch files in and of them selves without any additional info like a source tarball or a location to get the source tarball the patches directly apply to and the failure to inform are all breaking the license.

[vannilla]

I would really like to learn of some of the case names, how high up in the courts they've ever gone, and other information that might be fascinating. It would be interesting to see how a higher-level court would handle something of this sort surrounding a highly-technical field as this.

Off-topic:
I picked the first result I found. I'm sure if you do a more accurate research you'll find something more complete: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/GPL%20En ... nt%20Cases
An interesting thing is that most of the cases listed there are related to the issue with Feodor, as they are about failure to provide the source code in the form requested by the license.

[jobbautista9]

Regardless of whether fair use (which varies from country to country) applies or not, it is still a good idea to apply the terms of the MPL to those patches, even if the surrounding MPL code is trivial. Unless you're releasing your modifications (and only those modifications, not the surrounding MPL code) to the public domain, having the same license as the original code is always better for the sake of simplicity.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Post has been moved here as to not distract from on-going conversation.

viewtopic.php?f=67&t=27345

[Moonchild]

@dbsoft You still don't seem to understand the basics of licensing, then.

I wrote the guide with the chapters in them and in that order for a reason. You must read it as a whole. First understand ownership, then understand compliance vs non-compliance, to end up with the third part about termination of grants. Use the previous knowledge to understand the logic.

The moment a repo becomes non-compliant through breaking with the MPL, it is non-compliant as a whole. You can't use any of it for any reason. That includes pulling patches out of it, forking it, copying it, publishing it, etc. All the MPL licensed code is unlicensed the moment the license is broken and it becomes non-compliant because, as 5.1 says in the first sentence, the grant is automatically terminated in that case. No grant means no rights. No rights means no use or distribution. Licensing 101.
Once again go talk to a lawyer who can explain it if you still don't understand.

[dbsoft]

The moment a repo becomes non-compliant through breaking with the MPL, it is non-compliant as a whole. You can't use any of it for any reason. That includes pulling patches out of it, forking it, copying it, publishing it, etc. All the MPL licensed code is unlicensed the moment the license is broken and it becomes non-compliant because, as 5.1 says in the first sentence, the grant is automatically terminated in that case. No grant means no rights. No rights means no use or distribution. Licensing 101.
Once again go talk to a lawyer who can explain it if you still don't understand.

You don't only have the rights granted by the license, that is what you are misunderstanding. In fact, it is possible that the entire source code could be deemed fair use if it is for the public good... such as something like the only browser supported on XP. Again, you should take down that document and YOU should consult a lawyer before reposting.

Additionally I see nothing in section 5 that says anything but the individual grant is terminated. I am not sure why you think terminating the grant to a contributor makes all of that contributors modifications invalid. If you think there is text in the license that provides for that, please quote it.

If for instance Tobin had refused to give me the source code to his Interlink, which is built using UXP. All of his contributions to UXP would become invalid and UXP, Pale Moon, Interlink, Basilisk would no longer be usable by anyone. That is what you are saying?

[Moonchild]

No, no and no. Go talk to a lawyer.

I already quoted the relevant sentence. You just don't (or don't want to) accept it. I'm not going to repeat it again and again.

Also, demanding I take down the guide? Don't make me laugh! I'll not be silenced just because you misunderstand how software licensing works or (more likely) because it just happens to not stroke with you and your XP buddies.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Nuke.. just go in peace. Leave and never return. No one here is going to side with your creative and selective interpretation of anything.. Not the MPL, not events, not anything. You are and always were a traitor.. Just like djames1. Just like JustOff. Just like riiis and three dozen more.

[dbsoft]

I already quoted the relevant sentence. You just don't (or don't want to) accept it. I'm not going to repeat it again and again.

If that was it, then you are clearly wrong in my assessment.

Also, demanding I take down the guide? Don't make me laugh! I'll not be silenced just because you misunderstand how software licensing works or (more likely) because it just happens to not stroke with you and your XP buddies.

I didn't demand it, I suggested it because you are most likely spreading false information.

They are not my "XP buddies" I don't even know them, but I have used Mypal on XP when I needed it.