Version 1.0 of the MPL was written by
Mitchell Baker in 1998 while working as a lawyer at
Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape was hoping that an open-source strategy for developing its own
Netscape web browser would allow it to compete better with
Microsoft's browser,
Internet Explorer. To cover the browser's code, the company drafted a license known as the
Netscape Public License (NPL), which included a clause allowing even openly developed code to be theoretically relicensed as proprietary. However, at the same time, Baker developed a second license similar to the NPL. It was called the Mozilla Public License after Netscape's project name for the new open-source codebase and although it was originally only intended for software that supplemented core modules covered by the NPL, it became more popular than the NPL and eventually earned approval from the Open Source Initiative. Less than a year later, Baker and the
Mozilla Organization made changes to the MPL, resulting in version 1.1, a minor update. This revision was done through an open process that considered comments from both institutional and individual contributors. The primary goals were to clarify terms regarding patents and allow for
multiple licensing. This last feature was meant to encourage cooperation with developers that preferred stricter licenses like the GPL. Not only would many projects derive their own licenses from this version, but its structure, legal precision, and explicit terms for patent rights would strongly influence later revisions of popular licenses like the GPL (version 3). For these reasons, earlier versions of Firefox were released under multiple licenses: the MPL 1.1, GPL 2.0, and LGPL 2.1. Some old software, such as the Mozilla Application Suite, is still under the
three licenses. Therefore, in early 2010, after more than a decade without modification, an open process for creating version 2.0 of the MPL began. Over the next 21 months, the MPL was not only changed to make the license clearer and easier to apply, but also to achieve compatibility with the GPL and
Apache licenses. The revision team was overseen by Baker and led by
Luis Villa with support from Gervase Markham and Harvey Anderson. They would publish three
alpha drafts, two beta drafts, and two release candidates for comment before releasing the final draft of version 2.0 on January 3, 2012. ==Notable users==