License Policy
Any code checked into our source repositories needs to comply with our licensing policy and, if under the Mozilla Public License or the tri-license, should contain the appropriate license boilerplate text.
Mozilla Public License
The Mozilla Foundation is the custodian of the Mozilla Public License (MPL), a open source/free software copyright license currently at version 1.1. There is an annotated version to help you understand it, and a FAQ to help you if you want to use or distribute code licensed under it.Mozilla Source Code
Core Mozilla project source code is licensed under a disjunctive tri-license giving you the choice of one of the three following sets of free software/open source licensing terms:
- Mozilla Public License, version 1.1 or later
- GNU General Public License, version 2.0 or later
- GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 or later
This allows the use of our code in as wide a variety of software projects as possible, while still maintaining copyleft on code we wrote. Some Mozilla projects have slightly different terms, as follows:
| Tinderbox 1 | NPL (Netscape Public License) 1.1 or later |
| All other Perl webtools (e.g. Bugzilla, Tinderbox 2/3, Bonsai) | MPL 1.1 or later |
| Rhino (JavaScript in Java) | MPL 1.1 or later/GPL 2.0 or later |
The mozilla/webtools directory in CVS contains independent projects under various different sets of terms. As a rule of thumb, Perl projects are MPLed and PHP projects are tri-licensed, but check carefully.
Mozilla Binaries
Binary releases of Firefox and Thunderbird are made available under the MPL.
You can also read various historical documents relating to the Mozilla and Netscape Public Licenses.
If, after reading all the above carefully (particularly the FAQ) you have a further question about the copyright licensing terms of Mozilla project code or the MPL, please send it to licensing@mozilla.org.