Boot2Gecko/Licensing: Difference between revisions

We are often asked for a list of all the [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html free/libre]/[http://opensource.org/docs/osd open source] software licenses associated with Boot2Gecko/Firefox OS. This page attempts to answer that question, and related ones. While Mozilla attempts to provide guidance on these questions in an effort to be helpful, you need to take full responsibility for your interpretation of and compliance with open source licensing terms.

Free/libre/open source licenses have certain things in common, which qualify them for that designation. Among the rights that you are guaranteed when receiving such software are:

Because there are no restrictions on what the software can be used for, open source licenses are not EULAs (End User License Agreements). There is no need to present them to users for their 'acceptance', and Boot2Gecko does not do so. For code under some open source licenses (e.g. the MPL), it is acceptable for you to license binaries you have compiled yourself under different terms, and so it is legal for you to impose a EULA of your own on the use of those binaries. However, you should consult the open source licenses to see what restrictions they place on the terms of such a EULA. For example, it is often specified that the EULA cannot abrogate or restrict any rights the user may have, e.g. to source code, which are guaranteed by the terms of those open source licenses.  

==Licenses==

With all of that in mind, the following licenses cover code included somewhere in Firefox OS:

All parts of Firefox OS also contain many files under what are called "permissive licenses" - licenses like the [http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT MIT license] or the [http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause BSD license]. These licenses have no standard text, and so come in a large number of similar variants. With the exception of one occasionally-found clause (see below), most authorities judge all the variants of one of those licenses to have equivalent legal effect. You can see the full list of variant forms on the [https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/blob/master/apps/settings/resources/open_source_license.html Open Source Licenses] page (that link is to the version in the latest development code).

You can find the applicable advertising clauses by searching the [https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/blob/master/apps/settings/resources/open_source_license.html Open Source Licenses] page for the phrase "All advertising materials". Note that advertising clauses referring to the following people or organizations have been waived and so may be disregarded:

At the time of writing, the remaining clauses referred to:

The effect of such clauses depends on how you interpret the words "mentioning", "features or use", and "this software". You should consult your lawyers regarding the interpretation of such clauses and what effect, if any, they should have on the advertising strategy of you or your partners or distributors. However, to assist in interpreting "this software", Mozilla's reading of the code suggests that the former two clauses refer to a small section of code which adds ARM architecture support to the built-in C library (an unlikely subject for advertising) and the second two refer to the "OpenSSL" library which, in Firefox OS, is used solely for connecting to secure WiFi networks. (That is, it's not used for browsing secure websites - Mozilla's NSS library is used in that case.)

==License Compliance==

# Make sure you are shipping the copy of the Open Source Licenses page in the Settings app which matches the code you are using. (If you add code to Boot2Gecko from elsewhere which is under a different open source license, and which is not part of an app which has its own licensing information screen, you may wish to augment this page.)

Supplying source code is not required for all open source licenses - some licenses require all the source, some only require the source to changes you have made, and some don't require you to ship the source at all. So you do have the option of working out which parts it is required for and which parts it is not required for, and shipping only those. But we suggest it is probably easier to ship everything, if it will fit on your CD or device.  

You may also choose not to ship the source with the device. However, if you don't then, at least for the parts under the GPL, you will need to set up a mechanism for sending CDs to anyone who asks for them (see section 3 b. of the GPL version 2). You can also offer the source code for download at a URL, but [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#DistributeWithSourceOnInternet according to the Free Software Foundation], creators of the GPL, this by iself is not sufficient to meet the requirements. So perhaps it is easier to simply ship the source code with the device.

XXX provide appropriate commands for extracting this without history from hg/git? Need to warn that telling people how to get it from Mozilla may not be sufficient.