Until recently I always avoided the use of open-source code in my applications,

Question

Until recently I always avoided the use of open-source code in my applications, because of the legal headache it gives me. I rather spent a fair amount of money and not worry about attribution (since most commercial components don't require that), than paying nothing, but spending a lot of time reading legal texts, never to be sure whether I was fully compliant.

However, there is a ton of code out there that would be a shame to ignore. Also, sometimes the open-source solutions are of better quality than their commercial counterparts.

The license I encounter most and find hardest to grasp, is the MPL. All FAQs state that it is no problem to compile the code into a closed-source application, as long as changes to the code are made available. Assuming that I will not make changes to the code, what other things are there to keep in mind? For example, copyright notices and attribution; am I required to include a bunch of files with all the different copyright notices? Should I double-size my About dialog and list all open-source components with their vendor website and so on? How do you deal with this?

Please note that I have no problem with giving authors of code the credit they deserve. I would simply like to know what is reasonable, so I can take care of it in a pragmatic way, and no longer fear at least the MPL.

Hoping for your experiences.

Explanation / Answer

The MPL is an open-source license designed to protect its own code. If you modify MPL code, you need to publish those modifications under the MPL. That's the focus of the license. There's no "viral" requirement to affect the licensing provisions of the rest of your code.

The idea of the attribution requirement is to make people aware of the code. So if, as you say, you're looking for the fair thing to do and not "what can I get away with?", then you should probably just put your attributions in an "about box" or analogous feature. Your best guide here is the Golden Rule: if you had written the MPL code, how would you want a developer who used it to provide attribution in their program?

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