[Gnash] Gnash licensing

[Gervase Markham]

Dear GNU, and the Gnash team,

We are writing to you about the license of "Gnash", your free
replacement for the Macromedia Flash browser plugin.

The Mozilla codebase, including the Mozilla and Firefox browsers, are
licensed under the Mozilla Public Licence (MPL). We have previously
announced our intention to offer MPL-licensed Mozilla code under the GPL
and LGPL as well; we are well along the way to accomplishing this, but
the process is not yet complete. We hope to complete it soon, and give
users a choice of using our code under any one of the three licences.

As you may know, the FSF has previously claimed that the GPL and the MPL
are incompatible - that is, you cannot combine code under the two
licenses into the same binary and distribute it under GPL terms (as
required by the GPL). So, when the first release appears, Gnash will
only be distributable with Mozilla or Firefox when the relicensing
process is complete, and for distributors who choose to use the the GPL
terms.

We are writing to request that the Free Software Foundation consider
changing the license of Gnash from the GPL to the LGPL, to allow it to
be bundled with Mozilla-based browsers where distributors are using the
MPL terms.

Why would you want to do that? Here are some points to consider:

As outlined above, if Gnash is licensed under the GPL then it can be
bundled only with browsers 100% licensable under the GPL. This means
that, even when combined with a GPLed browser, all other bundled plugins
have to be GPL-licensable as well, which might be a problem for
distributors in cases where no free software plugin yet exists as a
replacement for a non-free one. In this case, they may well choose to
use the MPL terms, and bundle the Macromedia Flash plugin instead of
Gnash. The result would IMO be a delay in the acceptance and use of
Gnash, to its detriment, and lead to a user being given non-free
software instead of free software.

On the other hand, licensing Gnash and other free software plugins under
the LGPL supports a strategy of incrementally replacing non-free plugins
with free ones. Speaking personally I think this strategy is better
suited to promoting the cause of free software.

RMS explains the logic used about whether to licence under the GPL or
LGPL here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

"There are reasons that can make it better to use the Library GPL in
certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features
are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative
libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any
particular advantage, so it is better to use the Library GPL for that
library."

Gnash falls into this category - the features are readily available in
the standard Macromedia Flash plugin. So, we submit, it is better to use
the LGPL for Gnash.

Thank you for considering our request.

Gerv
(on behalf of The Mozilla Foundation)