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Sun Submits New License for Open Source Approval
Wannabe Code Monkey writes "Sun has submitted their Common Development and Distribution License to the Open Source Initiative for approval as an Open Source license. It appears that this license is what Sun plans to release Solaris under according to an article at news.com.com.com. Of particular note is: 'The CDDL is not expected to be compatible with the GPL, since it contains requirements that are not in the GPL,' Claire Giordano of Sun's CDDL team said in its submission."
Aren't there enough licences to pick from? Apparently not.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Look at the linked page. It's based heavily on the MPL, so it isn't really _new_. It's just got CYA modifications in it.
counter-disclosure: I read about this on CNet, just like everyone else, and I don't know any more about this than is available at Sun's CDDL site. Also, I don't really work anywhere near the Solaris group.
The CDDL is just a refinement of the MPL-- and I've read the redline diffs, and there doesn't seem to be anything sinister or extra-restrictive about the changes.
The MPL is nice, in that it is propagative but not viral. That is, if you distribute a modified binary you have to distribute the source for your modifications, but you can use MPL-licensed code in a larger project without any effect at all on the license of the larger project.
The only reason GPL compatibility is even an issue is that there was some hope that Solaris code could be picked up and used in Linux-- which I really think was pretty optimistic. Techniques learned from the Solaris source may be transferrable, though, and I think still will be as long as the Solaris source is truly open.
A summary of the changes, including why they felt the MPL didn't give them entirely what they wanted - they make it clear that they didn't want to create yet another license.
A details description of the differences.
In their submission they also say:
Actually looking at the license, I see that it is based on the Mozilla license (MPL), which addresses the two issues I noted. Sun's changes remove the part about being covered by a future version of the license, and remove some notice requirements and clarify a few things that are unclear or poorly stated in the original MPL.
The license may well be GPL 3 compatible, since Stallman has made noises about wanting to clear up the patent protection stuff. You'd really need to get a lawyer's opinon on that, though, after the GPL 3 has been released.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
I agree that Sun is schizophrenic wrt open source - one minute they love it, the next it is stealing jobs or doomed to fail or whatever. Also, I remember to get ahold of the solaris 8 source you had to sign a contract and couldn't do anything other than look at the code - no local changes, certainly no distribution or discussion with anyone (even within my company) who had not signed the contract. I wound checking their libc source a couple times to verify 2.6/2.8 compatibility of some software and that is about it. That license made it nearly useless.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Nope. There is no real difference between Open Source Software and Free Software. The Open Source Definition is basically a fork of the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Sure, the OSS and FS people may have different views of why software should be free, and sometimes the OSI, FSF, Debian and other people differ on whether a particular license is free enough, but "Free Software" and "Open Source Software" are (more or less) synonymous.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
As you say, the majority of Solaris users don't care. Those of us who do care about good support for cheap hardware have already left Sun and are using GNU/Linux. We're the reason that Sun has been hemorrhaging market share.
Sun like to talk about how Solaris scales up to big iron. But scalability goes both ways. Linux has been so successful because it doesn't just scale up to the high end, it also scales down to the low end. At work we use Linux across our cheap old desktops, our beefy servers, and our 100 CPU compute cluster. Having the same OS everywhere is a major savings in admin and developer time. Sun can't compete, because they refuse to support the cheap hardware.
I wonder if Linux can be forked into a more restrictive License, which doesnt go against the GPL. That way Solaris source blocks can be moved to Linux if its even worth that much.
In a word: No.
Anything that imposed additional conditions to the GPL (which any forked version is still covered by) would violate the licence. In order to be able to mix GNU/Linux code with Solaris code, according to the Solaris licence the code has to be non-redistributable, but according to the GPL, GNU/Linux must be freely distributable.
Hence the two can never be mixed.
If the GPL wasn't like this, Microsoft (or anyone else) could just "fork" Linux, put a windows sticker on it and call it their own, without returning anything to the community or making any of their changes redistributable.
Nobody forces you to redistribute your modifications, just as nobody forces you to use the code. If, on the other hand, you *choose* to use GPLed code, then you have to pay for that right by giving up the right to keep your code a secret.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
This kind of term means that by contributing or distributing code under such a license, you may ACCIDENTALLY be giving up the right to take patent actions against persons unknown.
You cannot give up such right without actually giving those persons a patent license. You may have to be prepared to cease distributing the software within 60 days if you do, though. I don't think this will bother many people.
If Sun are going open source then tell me why they've changed the MPL so they can include third party patented material without telling you (See the section 3 changes) and which you would have no rights to.
The MPL requires that anyone using third party patented material declares it so that you know if its contaminated and non-free as a contributed. The Sun license allows them to slip anything the like into the code then smile as a third party sues people for their contribution.
In general the changes are mundane (Software for Code etc) or in some cases quite sensible - legal jurisdiction, simplifying the definition of creator, but that one change is quite evil on first reading
> Some how I don't think Solaris 10 compiles with gcc
Actually, the 64 bit kernel and libraries for Solaris 10 AMD64 are compiled with a modified version of gcc3.4.3 - which is shipped with Solaris 10 (on both sparc and x86).
- Bart
I'm not sure if you're deliberately trolling or just confused. I think I agree with the poster who said that you're just an anti-GPL zealot. But in case you're truly misinformed, I'll give enlightening you a stab.
How exactly is this a very important point? If you are contributing to someone else's code, you of course need to make your code available using a compatible license. For example, if I decide to contribute a patch to Mozilla or OpenSolaris, I will have to provide my work to them under a license compatible with their codebase, if I want them to be able to distribute it.
This has nothing whatever to do with the GPL. I'm not sure what your point is. If I decide to contribute a patch to say, some component of OpenBSD, I'll need to provide said patch under the BSD license. So this point trivially applies to every single license.
Ok, now we're out in "What the fuck?" land. If you write a patch for the linux kernel, you're contributing to a GPL'd project. The only people that can benefit directly from this patch are people that use Linux. Presumably, if you're hacking the Linux kernel, you yourself use Linux. I mean, if I hack software package A, and improve it in some way, only people that use software package A are going to see the fruits of my labor.
Maybe you meant something like, you write something complex, say, a cryptographic algorithm, and submit it as a patch to the linux kernel. Then, the BSD guys (who also would like to have said algorithm in their kernel) are forced to reimplement it, instead of just taking your patch and hacking it.
Now, if that is what you mean (and I can't be sure, because that's not what you said) then you're wrong, quite simply. You can license your patch to the linux kernel under a BSD license. The linux guys can still use it. And so can the BSD guys. So again, it's just a matter of you (the author) choosing the license you want to distribute your code under.
Now, copyright law covers distribution of code only, so you could even write a patch to the Linux kernel and release it under some GPL-incompatible license -- no problem! But the Linux guys wouldn't be able to incorporate your patch, because then they would be distributing it under the terms of the GPL, which is incompatible with your license. But you could still make your patch available for free at some other source; and if a user downloaded your patch, they could apply it to the Linux kernel themselves and use it, and it would be completely legal, as long as they didn't try to redistribute your patch under the terms of the GPL.
It comes down to exactly what the GP said: the GPL prevents you from relicensing other people's code arbitrarily. But for your own code, you can license it however you want, and you can do this regardless of whether your code is a full product or just a patch. You can even distribute it under a bunch of different licenses, if it suits you. It's your code, you're free to license it however the hell you want.
I can't speak for bersl2, but I think you may have mistaken his point.
When Stallman originated (ie, named) the Free Software movement in '84, he did it for political reasons. Later, ESR and others said that if people want this stuff to be accepted in corporate society, they need to focus on practical and not political ideals. Political statements make suits nervous. (If you were on slashdot, certain Usenet groups, etc in '98 or so, you saw the discussions.)
One big sticking point was the name. "Free software" had two problems. First, ESR &co wanted to get away from the whole "Freedom!" issue, as I described.
Second, it's too easy to think "free" as in "free beer", not "free speech". (I first saw that meme at about the same time, I think.) When people think "free" in that sense, they may think of the plethora of stuff on Tucows etc that cost $0, but have no source. Since source access, modification, and distribution are a big part of what this new movement was about, they didn't want the free-as-in-beer association to be part of the new name either.
Hence, "open source" became the new term. So what bersl2 said has some merit: one big reason for coining the term "open source" is because ESR &co didn't want people to think that things like Spybot S&D were part of this new movement.
From a practical point of view, yes, the two movements generally support the same set of software. The guidelines are similar. But the philosophies are different, and those that care about the philosophy (such as Stallman) distinguish between the two, sometimes more subtly than others.
But the issue of unmodifiable source was one of the reasons that the name "Open Source" was formed: they wanted it, and felt that the term "free software" didn't emphasize that point enough.