

Ask YC: Using open-source code, yes or no? - eisokant

I'm starting my company and the Firefox extension we want to build has a specific design that can be seen in an open-source extension. Should we develop the whole extension or just build further upon the existing open-source code?<p>Is building upon existing open source the smart way to go, or will it prove to have legal or other difficulties in the future?
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cperciva
_Is building upon existing open source the smart way to go, or will it prove
to have legal or other difficulties in the future?_

Depends on the license. I'm building my backup system
(<http://www.tarsnap.com/>) around the BSD-licensed libarchive library, and I
don't forsee any problems at all. If libarchive were GPL-licensed... well, I
wouldn't be using it, because tarsnap is not open source.

(Incidentally, this is a perfect example of where the BSD license encourages
more contributions than the GPL -- glancing over my CVS commitmail, I see 52
commits I've made to libarchive code in the past 18 months, which is 52
commits more than I would have done if it was GPLed.)

~~~
eisokant
Thank you for your reply, it's given me more insight. The source code I am
talking about is listed under the Mozilla Public License version 1.1.
(<http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.html>) any opinion on if it is still
smart to proceed?

