OSI Approves Sun's CDDL

njcoder writes "CNET is reporting that Sun's Community Development and Distribution License has received approval from the Open Source Initiative on Friday. The CDDL has been rumored to be the proposed license for OpenSolaris which is expected to be released by the end of the month."

What about RMS?

[uyguremre]

Did FSF approve this license too?

Re:What about RMS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about RMS?

Re:What about RMS?

[zemoo]

The FSF doesn't need to approve anything - it's not GPL compatible anyways.

Early poster scans original artical before posting

[anomalous cohort]

This is for Solaris, not Java.

Slashdot is hard to understand

[SunFan]

Solaris is going to be full-blown Open Source Software, under an OSI-approved license. Does this mean nothing to the FOSS fanboys out there?

Slashdot went crazy over a token patent licensing scheme by IBM, but Sun aquired the IP to make OpenSolaris free to everyone...and nothing not even a dozen comments.

Are you really that beholden to cheap marketing and fanboyism?

Re:Slashdot is hard to understand

[jcgf]

Are you really that beholden to cheap marketing and fanboyism?

But of course. This is /. after all.

Jared

Re:Slashdot is hard to understand

[tolan-b]

I'm afraid I'm pretty suspicious of Sun at the moment, I'm going to reserve comment until I see how this pans out.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Slashdot is hard to understand

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Well you can't mix and match with Linux or other GPLed SW...what about the BSDs? What about Darwin? If it is open source but not usable, what is it?

Re:Slashdot is hard to understand

[SunFan]

Well you can't mix and match with Linux or other GPLed SW...what about the BSDs? What about Darwin? If it is open source but not usable, what is it?

Well, ask the BSD people what they would think if you submitted a patch that included code from Linux. They'd probably freak out.

All Sun would be doing is trying to keep GPL code out of the core Solaris system--no different than the BSDs.

BTW, Solaris _does_ include GPL'd software and other OSS software. Take a look under /usr/sfw/, /opt/sfw/, /usr/bin/, /u

Re:Slashdot is hard to understand

[civilizedINTENSITY]

BSD doesn't stop me from mixing BSD-ed code with GPL-ed code and releasing it under the GPL. So Solaris is thus *far* different from BSD.

My question was this: Can Solaris code be mixed with other codebases? Or is it a "standalone" collection of isolated and lonely code?

Re:Slashdot is hard to understand

[njcoder]

There are tons of open source projects out there. There were tons of openn source projects before linux existed and will be around long after linux is dead.

Why do so many of you *#$&(## think that open source is all about linux and how everthing open source has to benefit linux? It's the most disgusting type of attitude I see here and the most harmful to oss.

Re:Slashdot is hard to understand

[mpcooke3]

Well quite.

I'm still waiting for Gnu/Hurd to be finished.

Re:Slashdot is hard to understand

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Sorry to have confused you. I don't think it is all about Linux. Far from it. It is all about GNU, of which the Linux kernel is a very useful part.

Also, I think you are confusing what you call "open source projects", and "oss". OSS does not predate GNU. While there was an openess in computer science before GNU, it was the closing of that very same openess that lead to GNU. OSS is a Johnny-come-lately with an interesting point of view. Whether or not "harm" to oss means harm to Free software is open

Re:Slashdot is hard to understand

[njcoder]

My point is still the same. Why does solaris, or any other open source project need to be able to have it's code mixed in with other projects for it to be useful as you imply? The benefit of solaris going open source is to the people that use solaris and those that write software for it.

As far as I can tell, it's the first commercial unix, if not commercial os in general that is going open source. One of the arguments people make for linux over commercial unixes, is that it's open and people can contri

Re:Slashdot is hard to understand

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Well Redhat is a commercial OS, as is Novel/SuSE, and Mandrake, and etc...

I is true that "Just because you can't use it in Linux or other GNU software doesn't mean it is useless." However, this limits its usefulness. I'm coming from an open science point of view. Imagine if you were trying to solve a word problem, and your teacher marked you off for mixing analytic geometry and trig in your solution because the license on the use of the two weren't compatible. That doesn't mean either is less valueable

Re:Slashdot is hard to understand

[turgid]

Welcome to slashdot :-)

Re:It's Java that's the trouble

[SunFan]

Trolling is quite a difficult art to master. A good troll can get a dozen responses before people catch on.

Your basic complaint is that Sun's reference implementation of Java isn't under a GPL or BSD license. However, the language itself is fully specified, the JDK is free of charge, you can even include the JRE in your own product. Anyone is free to implement their own JDK, as far as I can tell, and some people and companies are doing this. Java is a much more clear-cut environment than .NET in this r

It's about community, not licenses.

[rjh]

You could release the entire Windows XP codebase under the GPL and you wouldn't see an active open-source community spring up around it--not immediately, at least. Community-friendly licensing is a prerequisite for communities, but putting a community-friendly license on Solaris isn't enough to cause [e-mail] to come into being.

While I certainly welcome Solaris to the open-source table, my question for Sun Microsystems is "all right, and what are you prepared to do to help a community form?" They don't have to do very much; just a developer's mailing list, Bugzilla and responsiveness from Sun engineers would do worlds.

Sun has already taken the biggest step by open-sourcing Solaris. The remaining steps are tiny by comparison, and quite painless. So, come on, Sun. Take those last couple of steps. Please. I, and many other open-source geeks, look forward to it.

I'll even meet you halfway on it. As soon as you release Solaris under an open-source license and put ISOs available for download, I'll install Solaris on one of my spare partitions. Assuming my hardware is compatible, I'll commit to using Solaris as my desktop UNIX for the next three months. Whenever I find a usability problem, I'll file Bugzilla reports. If GNOME won't compile, I'll submit patches. I'll do my part for open-source Solaris, as my own show of good faith.

Welcome to the open-source OS party, Solaris. There's no cover charge, the beer is cheap and the live band is surprisingly good. We're glad you could join us. :)

Re:It's about community, not licenses.

[bout]

> ...
> my question for Sun Microsystems is "all right, and what are you
> prepared to do to help a community form?" ...

Well, for starters, check out the OpenSolaris Community Manager's Blog [sun.com] and Technorati's OpenSolaris "tag" (category) site [technorati.com]...

Re:It's about community, not licenses.

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been blogged! [cuddletech.com] Check out the reply he posted.

Re:Sun is dying

[SunFan]

Sun will be out of business in 5 years.

Solaris 10 has a number of features over Linux and Windows, and Sun is now officially cheaper to buy from than Red Hat and Microsoft. Don't be so quick to write them off, especially since they turned profitable.

Jonathan Schwartz comments on CDDL

[vladnik]

http://www.vnunet.com/news/1160643 Sun's chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz said that he expects the Solaris source code to be released "hopefully by the end of this month". "The fact that the OSI approved the licence gives us carte blanche to leverage that or the BSD licence or the General Public Licence [GPL] in the release of Solaris," said Schwartz.