Boot2Gecko/Licensing

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We are often asked for a list of all the free/libre/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 the open source licensing terms.

Note that if you are a Firefox OS user, there is no need for you to read or agree to any of the open source license agreements. Complete freedom to use the covered software is guaranteed by all open source licenses. However, the vendor of your phone or third party software providers may require your acceptance of some of their agreements.

Background

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

• Use of the software for any purpose is unrestricted.
• Distribution of the code or binaries to others is unrestricted.

Therefore, unlike most proprietary licensing, you can be sure that none of these licenses will restrict what you can do with the software, or who you can give it to. And if you get it from us, there will never be charges associated with it. It is also therefore true that you do not need an agreement with Mozilla to manufacture or ship a Boot2Gecko phone. Note, however, that Mozilla retains all rights to its trademarks, including but not limited to "Firefox OS" and the associated logos. Therefore, you need an agreement with Mozilla in order to ship a "Firefox OS" phone or one which uses the Firefox or Mozilla name or branding.

EULAs

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 Firefox OS 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, that 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:

• Mozilla Public License 2.0 - the main license for Gecko
• Apache Public License 2.0 - the main license for Gaia
• GNU General Public License 2.0 - the main license for the Linux kernel
• GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1
• Eclipse Public License 1.0

All parts of Firefox OS also contain many files under what are called "permissive licenses" - licenses like the MIT license or BSD license. These licenses have no standard text, and so come in a large number of similar variants. With the exception of a couple of occasionally-found clauses, though, 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 Open Source Licenses page (that link is to the latest development version of the code).

The exceptional clauses you may encounter are:

'Advertising Clause'

Some variants of the BSD license have an 'advertising clause', which runs something like the following:

 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
    must display the following acknowledgement:
 This product includes software developed by <AUTHOR>.

You can find the applicable advertising clauses by searching the Open Source Licenses page for "All advertising materials". Note that advertising clauses referring to the following people or organizations have been waived and so may be disregarded:

• University of California, Berkeley
• The NetBSD Foundation
• Eric Rescorla for RTFM, Inc. (waived only for files included in Boot2Gecko/Firefox OS)

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.

How Do I Comply With These Licenses?

If you are shipping a phone running Boot2Gecko/Firefox OS, you should:

• Make sure you are shipping an up-to-date copy of the Open Source Licenses page in the Settings app. This takes care of license requirements to ship copies of licenses or to provide particular notifications.
• XXX shipping source