XUL:Xul Runner Licensing

From MozillaWiki
Jump to: navigation, search

XULRunner presents some difficult challenges in licensing. It will be shipped in many different scenarios, both as a mozilla.org product and as a part of applications delivered by other vendors and open-source projects. mozilla.org needs to protect itself by including a EULA with any products it ships, without unduly burdening these other vendors.

The main licensing scenarios for XULRunner installation are described below. To get a better sense of how the install process will appear to users, see XUL:Installation Story. The licensing gurus at mozilla.org are working through these issues and will update this wiki page as decisions are finalized.

Scenario A: App bundled with XULRunner

Some applications will ship as complete packages and will ship XULRunner with the application code. On Windows, this will be an installer .exe, and on mac, this might be a drag-and-drop DMG or an installer (technical research pending). This will (silently?) install an application called "Mozilla XULRunner".

Potential applications using this approach include:

  • Firefox (Official mozilla.org app)
  • Sunbird (Open-source app)
  • TBD Commercial apps

Questions:

  1. Except for Firefox, these installers are not being provided directly by mozilla.org. Do we need to show a mozilla.org EULA as part of the installation process? (I would like to avoid the EULA here if at all possible).
  2. If we do need to show a mozilla.org EULA, can it be combined with the EULA for the application? (See the Development Kit license below).

Scenario B: App with XULRunner "stub installer"

Some applications will ship only the application code, presuming that a compatible XULRunner is already installed. If there isn't a compatible XULRunner already present, the app installer will download and install one.

Questions:

  1. If the XULRunner is downloaded separately from the vendor's web/ftp site, does that change the EULA situation from scenario A?
  2. What about if it's automatically downloaded from the mozilla.org FTP site?

EULA for the XUL Development Kit

The XUL Development Kit is an important part of the XULRunner project. This is a developer SDK that providers headers, a basic build system, debugging tools, and packaging tools. The SDK must necessarily include xpidl and the other xpt tools, which are licensed under the LGPL. This may require some additional notifications for licensing.

In addition, if either scenario above requires an EULA, the XDK EULA will need some sort of redistributables clause to pass along non-warranty and disclaimer clauses to the final consumer.