| | License FAQWe would like to thank ICEFaces for the clearances they have made regarding license policies and the permission to re-use their license FAQ. Please find below some of the most frequently asked questions regarding the licensing open source and binary products. If your question is not answered below please do not hesitate to contact us and we will do our best to get your question answered. For more detail or clarity in interpreting the Mozilla Public License, interested parties are advised to consult their own legal counsel. Frequently Asked Questions:
What open source license does the edoras framework use? The edoras framework and its components are licensed under the Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL), or a derivative thereof. Where can I get a copy of the MPL Version 1.1? The official copy of the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1 can be found at http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/. Are product bundles available under licenses other than MPL 1.1? The edoras framework Tools and binary editions are available under the Eclipse Public License. Lastly we utilize the "Multiple Licensed Code" feature of the MPL 1.1 License that governs use and distribution. This feature permits developers to use and distribute the code under the Gnu Lesser Public License LGPL V 2.1 at their discretion. Does the edoras framework contain 3rd party software that may require different licenses? The edoras framework is 100% standards based and is engineered to work within in a Java 1.5+ and a J2EE environment. As such it does require links to other 3rd party Java libraries. Prospective downloaders should be aware that we will frequently bundle these 3rd party libraries alongside our own software as part of the download package. This is done for the convenience of our downloaders. For the most part these libraries originate from companies such as SUN and JBoss and are licensed under APACHE or CDDL licenses. A complete list of bundled third party libraries and their respective license information can be found as part of your download. Our selection of MPL 1.1 was based on a set of business criteria that we felt needed to be met in order for our open source initiative to be successful. First we felt that we needed to use a license that was generally recognized and well received by the open source community. Second, we needed to be assured that the license reflect the spirit of open source in its treatment of developer attribution and reciprocity. Third we believed that the license needed to be clear and unambiguous in stating that end users are under no obligation to open source their application code, and remain free to license their software under whatever commercial conditions they choose provided their application code does not include any part of the original edoras fraemwork open source software and that they did not modify any of the original edoras framework open source software. After an extensive review of license models we determined that the MPL best met these business criteria. What is the concept behind a reciprocal license and why do you use it? Reciprocity requires that any modification of the open source licensed code must in turn be made publicly available in source code to the entire community. The notion of reciprocity was introduced into open source licenses to ensure that changes and improvements made to the software will always remain available as open source. This reduces the risk of incompatible versions of the code from being generated and circulated amongst the community or the creation of proprietary versions of the open source software being developed. With MPL, the requirement to provide the source code of edoras framework original code and/or edoras framework modified code only applies to code that is distributed to third parties. If a customer makes any edoras framework open source modifications and only uses those modifications internally (and does not distribute those modifications to third parties), then the customer is not required to make the source code of such modifications available to anyone, and the reciprocity obligation does not apply. Simply put, if you modify any file of the edoras framework open source software other than a configuration file you are creating a derived work. If you copy and paste chunks of edoras framework open source software or include edoras framework open source software which is licensed under MPL 1.1, within the body of a different code base you are creating a derivative work. We interpret our code base to be a dynamically linkable software library as that term is commonly used in the industry (i.e. code from the library never actually exists within the body of your program). Linking to edoras framework open source software or making function calls on it from another program, or bundling edoras framework open source software alongside other applications, does not create a derivative work. The MPL 1.1 does not require anyone to make available the source code of programs that use edoras framework open source software in this manner, and permits those programs (other than the edoras framework open source software) to be distributed under licenses chosen by the licensor. What can I do with the edoras framework open source under the MPL 1.1 license? Under the MPL 1.1 license you can:
How can I use the edoras framework and still protect my own developed intellectual property? Provided that you have not modified the edoras framework open source software to create a derivative work as described above in "What is a derived work?" you are under no obligation to disclose your own code base. You can sell or license your software under any license or terms that you wish, except that any edoras framework open source software must be distributed under the terms of the MPL 1.1 license. Am I free to commercially license my code under a different license? Yes. Provided that you have not created a derivative work of the edoras framework open source software, you can license your software under any license and terms as you see fit (although the edoras framework open source software must still be licensed under the MPL 1.1 license). |