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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."
I am glad to see sun going in to an open source direction, but how long will it last this time?
When Solaris 8 source was released, it was not exaclty open source, and did not last long at all.
...if the license doesn't follow BSD or GPL methodology. Most of the UN*X geeks that I know (including myself) subscribe to one or the other established licenses either because we want our work to be out there for the benefit of everyone, even if it is used in commercial applications and closed (BSD) or because we want it out there and we want it to remain out there because it was hard work, and not be closed (GPL). I don't see any other positions really available to coders who don't want their code to be rendered unavailable to the public at large.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's a not-particularly-heavily-modified version of the MPL.
It seems not, because they presumably had to modify it to include the fact that the license grant is "subject to third party intellectual property claims".
Which probably makes it next to useless, as I believe Solaris is based on Sys V code, which means that those 3rd party rights might belong to either SCO or Novell, it's tricky to tell which at this stage.
From what I read of it, you can distribute modified versions, but the must be under the same licence, much like what the GPL requires.
The main difference from what I see is that if you claim that the software infringes one of your patents, you lose you rights to use or distribute the software unless you agree to pay royalties to the author of the software. That sounds like a good thing to me.
Fair enough .. they won't let others sell it.
.. why should anyone contribute if Sun is going to make all the profits??
.. example IBM, Red Hat and other companies fund development of linux.
But then
Sun is not a charity, but neither am I.
And yes Linux distributors pay to develop parts of Linux
I find the "patent peace" provision very interesting. If I am reading this right, basically what this does is make the Sun license viral-- becuase if you do not switch to the Sun license, you lose your patent protections. Is this correct?
If memory serves, there has been an official FSF statement that while this kind of term is GPL-incompatible, they think it is good, and will likely include similar terms in a future version of the GPL.
No one in their right mind would start a new project using the GPL. The GPL doesn't provide patent protection. With all the patent litigation lately it would reflect poorly on Sun to kick off such a large project using an outdated license that doesn't cover the legal issues developers face today.
Most new OSI-approved licenses seem to cover patents in some form. There's even talk about a new version of the GPL that will, but as of now there's nothing.
Using the GPL would have earned them a kick in my book.
Of course, if you (or anyone else here for that matter) are complaining without actually knowing the rationale behind the license, you should go take a look at Sun's detailed description of the license.
GPLv3 should also talk about patents, and the current Apache license already does. Do you find that just as unappealing, or are you just reaching for something to dislike about it.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Initial Developers grant You the the right to use, modify and sell ("under Patent claims infringed", whatever that means) their software.
Contributors (who modify the Initial Developer's code) grant You the same rights. This applies to the whole work with modifications, or just the modifications themselves.
You must provide the License text when you distribute Your software, including the modifications. If you distribute executable code, You must make the source code available.
All code remains under this version of the license. You (essentially) can't modify the license. Sun could revise the license, but it isn't retroactive unless specified.
You can include softare with this License in a "Larger Work" that's under a different license, as long as doing so doesn't break this license.
No Warranty, Limitation of Liability, jurisdiction, etc.
The fact that Sun does not want to allow a kick-ass hybrid Solaris/Linux to exist shows that they don't want to help the community build a free and powerful operating system that could easily take over the desktop market share from M$. Solaris could really get a boost from the hardware compatibility and user-friendliness that Linux offers, while Linux could also take advantage from Solaris's rock-hard internals. In my opinion this is just another half-hearted measure that won't attract any more developers to Solaris and that won't help Sun's decline into bancruptcy.
This is a good license. In terms of what it tries to do, it seems to be on the level of the LGPL. Whether you consider that to offer you adequate protections for your code is up to you. That's why you get to decide how your code is licenced.
Of course, the big difference is that Sun's licence goes beyond a simple copyright licence (like the GPL and LGPL). Sun's license is a contract. There are pros and cons of both. A copyright license cannot offer patent licencing. Here, Sun is giving you the rights to use the software even if it infringes on some of their patents. Now, it would seem obvious that if someone opensourced software they owned that used a patent they owned that they were letting you use that patent without royalties, but that isn't the case (legally). A company could GPL-licence software that used a patent they owned and then sue users and distributers later for infringing on that patent. It would be a terrible, but legal, thing to do.
The downside to it being a contract is that contract law varies GREATLY from country to country. This is why the FSF has tried to keep the GPL/LGPL tied to copyright law only. Copyrights, while they vary between countries, don't vary as much as contracts do. This means that there could be legal complications based on geography.
Even Linus Torvalds says that the GPL isn't a perfect license. In my work, I know that it isn't since I develop web scripts which, if GPL-licenced, would allow people to build amazing capabilities into it and never share the source they used for their site. GPL-incompatible doesn't mean bad. In fact, it can be good. The Affero licence (which is the GPL plus a provision that if you use it to power your site you have to offer that code to visitors of the site - since one might make cool modifications to power a site and then never actually distribute it).
The GPL is a great licence, but it isn't perfect. Right now, the GPL 3 is being written and if it is written to include things like patent grants and such, it would be compatible with this licence. Most people, including me, had hoped that this would be a big present for the Linux community and so there is a lot of disappointment at a GPL-incompatible license. That is to be expected. It would have been great if it were GPL compatible. The amount of code-sharing that could have happened would have been amazing. Of course, the GPL 3 might make that code-sharing available (I'm unable to ever give up hope) and it's still good to have another good opensource operating system to compliment the BSDs and Linuxes.
If you want gratis software then just pirate it like a bunch of people do.
Because Some people care about doing things legally. Free/Open Source Software provides a legal means to be productive on a computer with a tight budget. I really wish GPL fanatics would realize that the general public DOESN'T CARE about software "wanting to be free" and DOESN'T CARE about developers not wanting their work to be usurped for corporate profit. They want high quality, usable software for free. Period. They want to not have to worry about the slim chance that Adobe/Microsoft/Macromedia might come after them for having a pirated copy of an over-priced application.
These people are the ones who will make open source software popular. They are the ones that will put 50 bucks down for mandrake or SuSE, and in so doing, buy an entire system full of useful apps whose windows/apple counter parts would have cost them hundreds of dollars. They don't give a shit about GPL vs BSD vs MIT vs blah blah blah. They just care that the software works, and that it works well, and that it's FREE as in mother-fucking-gratis. Don't characterize them as would-be-pirates because they don't give a shit about your (ph|f)ilosophy. Don't look down your nose at them because you're a developer and you know what open source is really all about. Pull your head out of your ass and realize some people:
1. Don't care.
2. Don't want to break the law.
You'll just push them away.
I prefer my licenses not to touch on the issues of patents; I really object to them talking about US crypto export regulations as well. These things are not license clauses in my view, they are extra legalities - see the clauses about "if parts of this license are unenforceable".
There is copyright, there are licenses, there are patents, there are export laws. Let them all be separate, don't conflate them.
But that's mostly my own taste, apart from this quote from opensource.org:
Some countries, including the United States, have export restrictions for certain types of software. An OSD-conformant license may warn licensees of applicable restrictions and remind them that they are obliged to obey the law; however, it may not incorporate such restrictions itself.
HTH,
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn