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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."
news.com.com.com? are you sure it isn't news.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.c om.com.com.com.com.com?
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.
The implication here is that there's something bad about them not wanting to GPL their source. Why should they? Simply making it open source of some kind seems good enough. That way we get to see it and potentially modify it for our own benefit. Not having read their proposed license, I'm assuming it won't allow anyone to resell the code. And why should they? It's their family jewels, and I see no reason they should allow competitors to take it and run.
...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.
Aren't there enough licences to pick from? Apparently not.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
A kiss - because they're still trying to somehow connect their business with Open Source movement. They're making new license for every product they release to the Community, but none of these licenses is compatible with GPL. Which is OK for me, I'm not a religious fanatic, I just want my software to be free (as in beer) and usable - and Sun's product's I'm using are free (as in beer), regardless of what you might say.
A kick - because they still prefer business. Novell and Mandrake can somehow make it with GPL - maybe Sun should also try?
Well, that makes me happy. It seems to say that if you hold the Sun license, you can't patent-shakedown anybody in the Sun community. I'll buy that; getting this kind of license adopted by many people is probably the only way to end the horror. I'd be interested to see whether Microsoft gets all ornery about this license.
Of course, I'm also interested to see how much I'll get flamed by even implying support for a license besides the GNU GPL.
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.
I'm still not sure about this key question:
Is it now possible to put Sun's funky new filesystem straight into Linux, or does someone have to rewrite it?
When they say not-GPL-compatible, I assume no, but I'd like someone with a better grasp of this to confirm it.
I don't see why couldn't go with one of the existing licenses: surely, among BSD, GPL, LGPL, MPL, CPL, and all the other already approved licenses, they could have found something. Based on Sun's history and relationship with open source, I would wait for a careful review: it is quite possible that Sun is trying to slip something in there.
(Of course, the license is only on Solaris, so it doesn't really matter that much anyway. If Sun used this for Java, it would matter more.)
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:
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.
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
Sun isn't a person. They are neither nice nor naughty. They make cold, calculating decisions based on the business environment and based on maximizing profit. That's why they have released OpenOffice and are releasing Solaris under a FOSS license, and why they are not releasing Java under a FOSS license. That's all. Don't believe marketing hype that tries to make you look at any company as a person.
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.
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.
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.
Sure, but not because I work at Sun. Like I said, I don't have anything to do with this stuff.
So, besides distributing patches to software, we can start distributing patches to licenses as well?
The provision you quoted is nothing new, and I really don't see what the big deal is. From the GPL:
And you're an anti-GPL zealot... Just as bad in my view.
Authors of source have the right to license their work however they like, whether it be GPL, BSD, CPL, MPL, etc. Diversity in licenses is a good thing, but that doesn't make the GPL evil.
-ragnar
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 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.
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
What Sun probably did not do, was triple license for compatibility, as Mozilla did (you can use alternative licenses of GPL or LGPL if you choose). This makes the work much less useful to outsiders who are not part of the Sun mainstream.
OpenOffice.org is Dual SISSL/LGPL.
I wouldn't doubt solaris being the same.
Jay | http://oldos.org
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.
In this sense, the GPL is viral. If you use any GPL code -- even a line -- in your program, you must GPL all the code in your program.
This statement isn't totally accurate. Copying a single line of code constitutes fair use, which the GPL has no authority over (since it only licenses, and doesn't restrict). Thus, you can copy a single line of code without being compelled to GPL your work. (And of course virality only applies if you distribute it.)
What I see as a vital point in distributing code with source and license allowing for changes is the ability for the users to change the code. This might seem bit obvious, but it was the nerve behind GPL (you can read about it in the book about Stallman). For me Linux or BSD are much better than Solaris, because when something does not work in Solaris I have to find a klugde to go around. If I have the same problem in Linux or BSD I can always fix the broken code. This is of course tedious task, but sometimes you have no other choice. In closed source environment you don't have such an option. In my opinion releasing Solaris with source code would really help. It would also allow for writing better software for Solaris, since there is no better way to understand the inner workings of some software feature than to see the source code. The only problem is how much code would be open sourced. I would hope for the most important parts of kernel (memory, scheduler) and network stack (fire engine). Otherwise there is really not much sense in open sourcing (at least in my opinion).
You can defy gravity... for a short time