Ways to avoid section 10.2 of MPLv2

Question

I am looking for a copyleft license. My issue with GPLv3 is that it is so hard to understand. I don't want to license my work under terms I do not even understand. Fundamentally, I don't understand it because it, as a strong copyleft license, has to clarify many more legal nuances. So, my thought was to look for a weak copyleft license because I assume these are less complex. I read through MPLv2 and it makes sense and seems great for my purposes. Then I got to section 10.2 and was disappointed:

10.2. Effect of New Versions
You may distribute the Covered Software under the terms of the version of the License under which You originally received the Covered Software, or under the terms of any subsequent version published by the license steward.

Essentially, this means Mozilla can change what copiers can do at any time. I think this is horrible. I am looking for a solution to this problem:

1. I could remove section 10.2 and rename the license per section 10.3:

   10.3. Modified Versions If you create software not governed by this License, and you want to create a new license for such software, you may create and use a modified version of this License if you rename the license and remove any references to the name of the license steward (except to note that such modified license differs from this License).

   According to this answer the primary downside to doing so would essentially be that Mozilla could potentially be disinclined to provide legal council to me if requested. Is a modification like this advisable?

2. I could find another license. I have searched but haven't found a similar one. What is a similar license that doesn't have this bad clause?

Answer 1

The fundamental problem with all copyleft licences is that they have to have a fair amount of legal boilerplate in them. GPLv2 puts it rather well, to my mind, when it says in the preamble

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

Restricted copyleft licences are likely to be as least as bad, since they now have to define the bits of the software that are copylefted, instead of just "all".

If you want a simple licence, go permissive. If you want a copyleft licence, the GPL is actually pretty simple to work with, provided you're not trying to play fast and loose with it: make sure that everyone who gets a copy of your binary also gets the complete source code, and make sure that it's clear they get all of it under GPL, and you'll be fine.

Don't, however, start making up your own licences. If you do, then for all practical purposes you might as well not bother freeing your software, because most people who will think about reusing it aren't going to parse the licence either. Everyone out there understands the major copyleft and permissive licences, so they can sidestep reading them when they see the licence tag. If they have to stop and research what Anonomos Public Licence v1.35 lets them do, they're not going to bother.