Clover wrote:
new version available at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=237714
I'm sure a document like this already exists on the website somewhere. Ah yes:
http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.0/opensource.html
[I speak for my original document rather than Daniel's subsequent modifications]
Yours is presumably a derivative of this?
It's not a derivative since I started from scratch. But it covers some similar topics.
Why the need for change?
The focus is different. The old document just deals with the fact that Mozilla is Open Source - the focus is on the fact that you can change and adapt the code. This might be of interest to some businesses but is irrelevant to all but a fraction of a percent of end users. Those people who do care about altering code probably already know what open source is and so the only important information in that document that is likely to be both interesting and novel is that the MPL isn't the GPL.
The new document is intended for end users and hopes to convey the various senses in which the word 'free' is used by the Mozilla project and in particular includes the fact that Mozilla is cost free - i.e. that the downloadable product is the same as the for-money CD (open source doesn't imply this - many Linux distributions offer different features in their retail versions and CD versions, for example). It's also supposed to reassure the potential user that Mozilla won't do any of the antisocial things that other 'free' products do, such as installing spyware. Hopefully all this information will encourage people to download the software without worrying that it will screw up their computer.
The part of the new document dealing with open source is, arguably, less important but is intended as an introduction to the idea of open source and to emphasize the fact that open code improves the quality of the software. It's not intended as a guide to all the details of the MPL v the GPL or designed to enumerate the benefits that people developing browser-like applications would get from building on top of Mozilla.
The other problem with the opensource.html document is that it's part of
a Mozilla 1.0 set of pages that are therefore apparently out of date. In
particular, those pages don't clearly apply to the new products (Firefox
et al.). Since many outsiders think that these are a totally separate
set of products, they won't necessarily infer that they have the same
licensing as the suite. It's also too hard to find if it's supposed to
be read by first-time visitors, especially those loooking for Thunderbird or Firefox information.
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