Why is Mozilla code being relicensed?
Primarily to address concerns about whether the Mozilla licensing scheme is “compatible” with the GPL and LGPL. After the NPL and MPL were created, the Free Software Foundation stated that the NPL and MPL were “incompatible” with the GPL. “Incompatibility” in this context means that (in the opinion of the FSF) developers who combined code licensed under the NPL or MPL with code licensed under the GPL and distributed the resulting work could not do such distribution without violating the terms of the GPL. Given that the LGPL contains similar language to the GPL, if the MPL were in fact incompatible in this way with the GPL, it would arguably be incompatible with the LGPL as well. (The LGPL allows code released under LGPL terms to be combined in certain specified ways with code released under non-LGPL terms, as for example when releasing an application using a library consisting of code released under the LGPL. However the relevant LGPL provisions do not address all possible ways in whic
