The UXP Mypal story:

A U.S. de­vel­op­er named Matt Tobin, loc­a­tion Kokomo-Greentown, Indiana, assert­ed that Mypal was an “illegal” fork of his own work on PaleMoon (tm), it­self a fork of Classic Firefox.

Matt Tobin, also known as Captain Tobin and New Tobin Paradigm, was 36 years old as of 2021. He'd work­ed con­tin­uous­ly on Pale­Moon (tm) for years. His efforts helped to make that project and the UXP plat­form which under­lies it suc­cesses from a tech­nical per­spec­tive.

This site considers UXP and PaleMoon (tm) to be among the most important FOSS steps and achieve­ments of the late 2000s. Markus Straver and Matt Tobin stood up to Mozilla and said “No” to Firefox Quantum and the death of XUL.

No other major FOSS project had the cojones need­ed to do this. Not in a man­ner that would stick. It was remark­able to see the majors roll over like puppy dogs. But UXP came out of nowhere and stayed the course.

However, there's a flip side. Matt has been able to focus on FOSS as much as he has be­cause he's been on dis­a­bility for mental ill­ness. His father has sup­port­ed him as well due to his inabili­ty to work at a regu­lar job.

Disclaimer: We don't know if these points are still cor­rect. Addi­tion­al­ly, the state­ment that it's mental ill­ness as opposed to autism comes from Matt Tobin him­self and may not be relia­ble.

We can state with­out uncertain­ty that Matt once told this writer he was a “razor's edge from suicide”. This isn't some­body that you'd want as a baby­sit­ter.

Matt is known to the OpenBSD com­munity and others for his color­ful style.

If he's feeling stressed, Tobin threatens to kill peo­ple. He stated to this writer that he was going to “hunt you down and kill you and then kill you again”.

Matt add­ed that he'd kill the object of his rage some more after that. So much kill. :P

In the case of Mypal, Matt complain­ed that Mypal had vio­la­ted the Mozilla Pub­lic License in two re­spects.

The violations were innocent mistakes. One was pure­ly tech­nical. However, Tobin de­clined to accept cor­rec­tions of the vio­la­tions. Instead, he said that he had the right to revoke Mypal's use of the Pale­Moon (tm) source code for­ever.

The ironic part is that Matt Tobin him­self was one of the most serious vio­la­tors of the Mozilla Public License on the planet.

Not just some ran­dom FOSS license. Matt Tobin was a conscious serial violator of the exact same license that he went after a large­ly inno­cent devel­op­er, Feodor2, for.

Tobin released binaries of Interlink, a fork of the FOSS email pro­gram Thunder­bird, but he doesn't re­lease the source code for Inter­link.

That's the definition of ironic. And of a juicy law­suit if the pro­ce­dures can be fig­ur­ed out.

Matt Tobin's re­sponse to the Interlink license issue was to claim that he did release the source code for Interlink in the form of pass­word-pro­tec­ted archives which he pro­vided upon re­quest.

The legal problem for Tobin is that, he's stated public­ly, he only sent the archives to peo­ple that he trusted.

Um. Sure, that isn't as illegal as Hell. :-)

Advice re­la­ted to filing MPL actions is wel­come. If some­body would like to do this them­selves, AlbusLuna will con­sider con­tribu­ting to funds for attorneys.

Send requests for sue-Matt Tobin funds to the fol­low­ing email address: me at albusluna.com. How­ever, don't bother wri­ting un­less you've got an actual attorney lined up that I'll be able to re­search and phone.

If you're in com­muni­ca­tion with Mozilla and/or Mozilla attorneys, let me know about that so that there is no re­dun­dant effort or ex­pense.

This site has some sympathy for Matt Tobin despite his some­times murder­ous be­ha­vior and the fool­ish and self-absorbed approach to busi­ness that is like­ly to cost him every­thing. But he does need to reflect.

Tobin is a spoiled man-child. Emphasize “child”.

He fell in love with a male youth — now a British rock star — be­cause they both loved Sonic. The remark about suicide was made be­cause he feared that the rock star would leave him.

The duo told this writer that they liked to hack servers and to destroy lives. They did seem to be a match.

For what it's worth, the drawing that may have attract­ed Matt ap­pears to the right. It's the British rock star's por­trayal of him­self at age 13. The draw­ing is titled “Sonic Kid”.

Matt doesn't necessarily need to grow up. But if he's going to play in the real world, it's past time he learned that some­times the real world is going to play back.

I'll offer Matt Tobin one direct state­ment for today:

Matt, I could have had you not just arrest­ed but put away for 5 to 15 years. It isn't unusual. Google what hap­pen­ed to the origin­al voice of Charlie Brown.

I con­sider­ed it. You and Tongara, as a pair, were an irri­ta­tion, you know.

But I'm dealing with more than you are. I've travel­ed further and have a broad­er per­spec­tive. So, I shrug­ged you off. But get your act together or we'll need to look at legal steps that tan­trums in your forums won't be able to pre­vent.

Matt, you know that I'm thorough and that I fol­low through with things if I'm forced to get start­ed. Details are what I am.