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."

Comments

Based on Mozilla Public License

[ChrisRijk]

A PDF showing the difference between MPL and CDDL.

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:

The CDDL is similar to the MPL and its derivative licenses (CPL, SPL, etc.) in terms of combination with software distributed under other licenses. As with the MPL, files made available under the CDDL can be linked together with files made available under another license, as long as the other license does not prevent such linkage. This means that (for example) files licensed under the CDDL can be linked together with files licensed under the MPL, SPL, CPL (or other licenses that allow files under different licenses to be linked together) as well as with code released under "academic" licenses such as BSD, AFL, Apache, and X11. In addition, source code licensed under the CDDL can be combined in the same file with code licensed under an academic license, as long as the resulting source file is distributed under the CDDL.

Re:If you RTFA...

[808140]

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.

You conveniently ignore one very important point: patches against a big GPL codebase are WORTHLESS without the rest of that codebase.

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.

Yeah, I can write a patch to the linux kernel (or any other GPL project) and license it however I want. But for anyone to make use of my patch, they'll have to make use of GPLed code as well - what, you expect me to believe that my patch will cleanly apply to the BSD kernel?

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.

If an author contributes code to a large GPL codebase, he is de facto required to GPL it. Sure he can release it under some other license; however, to make use of it, everyone else will have to apply it to the original GPLed code, which immediately brings it back under the GPL. The author has your so-called freedom in name only, but can never make use of that freedom; in my book, that means the author is just as restricted as the GPL.