Ask HN: Why is the Mozilla Public License (MPL) 2.0 not popular?

1 point

8 years ago

The MPL 2.0 is considered a "weak" copyright license. It requires your modifications of MPL-licensed code to be released publicly if you distribute your product or service outside your company.

However, if your changes to MPL-licensed code are only distributed inside your company, you do not need to release those changes publicly.

The MPL 2.0 FAQ states:

> "The MPL fills a useful space in the spectrum of free and open source software licenses, sitting between the Apache license, which does not require modifications to be shared, and the GNU family of licenses, which requires modifications to be shared under a much broader set of circumstances than the MPL."

The above taken from: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/FAQ/

The MPL 2.0 seems like a reasonable compromise between the permissiveness of MIT and Apache licenses and the strictness of the GNU licenses.

So why is the MPL 2.0 not more widely used?