Talk:Common Development and Distribution License

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Is it a free software licence?

"...due to some details." - might want to expand that.

Is this a free software license?

FSF asserts that it is a free license, yes. --Webmink 10:03, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Free Software Foundation asserts that it is a free license and that its incompatibility with GNU GPL is mainly due to some details. What details? --Terrible Tim 23:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

All information on this subject is now at a new location on the FSF site. --Webmink 14:21, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Quoting the fsf:

This is a free software license which is not a strong copyleft; it has some complex restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL. It requires that all attribution notices be maintained, while the GPL only requires certain types of notices. Also, it terminates in retaliation for certain aggressive uses of patents. So, a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the CDDL cannot legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the CDDL for this reason.
Also unfortunate in the CDDL is its use of the term "intellectual property".

Snarius 06:10, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.tomhull.com/ocston/docs/mozgpl.html goes into the details of the incompatibility. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TRS-80 (talk • contribs) 09:56, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

POV edits by Jörg Schilling

I have reverted the POV statements added by Jörg Schilling who is currently in a dispute with the debian development team on whether cdrtools is compatible with the GNU Public License and Debian Free Software Guidelines. BigE1977 19:58, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Preferred licence

The CDDL is one of the 9 preferred licenses listed by the OSI. -- This is not clear from the web page, and it should be mentioned on this very site to count as a fact IMHO. Otherwise add a citation link to the bloody mailing list post Schily always refers to, but remember that this is explicitly marked as a draft on the beginning of the mail, and it does not prefer any license over another. I values them by being used in "strong communities", so rather by usage count than by any reasoning. Thus I added a {{Fact}} tag. --Philipp Kern 12:10, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Authorless contributions public domain?

In the section about author contributions needing to say who made the modification, there is a text which seems to try to justify this: "On the other hand it could be claimed that submissions that explicitely lack identification of the author might be considered public domain (at least until the author can be determined)" - I don't mind someone trying to justify it, but that sounds like nonsense. Everything is copyrighted, with only a few exceptions such as if it is explicitly put in the public domain, or if the author cannot claim copyright (as is the case for the governement of the USA). Any objections to removing that sentence? Gronky 15:10, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Linux

Tucker and Schilling agreed that the License for OpenSolaris should be as open as possible and that it should allow other free projects (including Linux) to use code from OpenSolaris as finally only competition that introduces new ideas is important.

Why linux is underscored here ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.12.214.196 (talk) 12:52, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

About the license?

This article spends half the time talking about vague accusations that GPL supports have thrown at CDDL, and goes into a little history-- but doesn't actually describe the CDDL. What is different about the CDDL than Mozilla or BSD? What are the implications? The CDDL page seems to be dangerously close to a GPL flamewar. IMHO, the "Controversy" section should be eliminated, the GPL controversy shortened to a single sentence in the introduction, and someone familiar with the CDDL should actually describe the CDDL. Sam 15:35, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct, the article is too close to a flame war. Given the fact that you may combine CDDL + GPL code in case that you publish the complete source code, it is even wrong in significant parts. 87.158.106.216 (talk) 19:40, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Where's the beef? All opinion, no data

The article desperately needs direct quotes of all the relevant clauses in the licenses being argued over, not just people's opinions of them, even if those people are attorneys or other primary actors.24.17.178.36 (talk) 02:08, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree - please will you do so? I find the whole tone flamey and intended to convey a particular POV. So far I have held back from editing since Wikipedia prefers articles by people not involved... Webmink (talk) 02:22, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree too: the article needs arguments, not people's opinions. But I don't think it will be easy to find people not involved in the case and competent enough to write about this. I suggest you, Webmink, give it a try if you want. Just give arguments. I guess Mr Schilling will want to give his. Then we (independant observers) can observe and decide how to phrase things to get NPOV.--OlivierMiR (talk) 14:57, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Clarify GPL VS CDDL

To clarify the GPL VS CDDL compatibility question, let us suppose that I create a software S containing (possibly among other things) a part of code covered by the CDDL license, and a part of code covered by the GPL license version 2 (the reasoning might also work with GPL v3, I don’t know). I think that this new software S could be legally delivered with no possible licensing terms. This is what I guess is called "GPL and CDDL incompatibility". (Credits: I use arguments from http://www.tomhull.com/ocston/docs/mozgpl.html, rephrased and shortened and adapted to CDDL.) Please tell me what you think.

The reasoning is the following. The GPLv2, section 2 [1], says that: "If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it."

Thus, S should be licensed under GPL, and the GPL terms would also apply to parts of the program, thus also on the CDDL-covered module. However, the CDDL, section 3.4 [2] says that: "You may not offer or impose any terms on any Covered Software in Source Code form that alters or restricts the applicable version of this License or the recipients’ rights hereunder." One of these rights is (section 3.6): "You may create a Larger Work by combining Covered Software with other code not governed by the terms of this License and distribute the Larger Work as a single product. In such a case, You must make sure the requirements of this License are fulfilled for the Covered Software."

But the GPL terms forbids the user to combine any part of S with, e.g., closed source software, thereby "restricting the recipients’ rights" and meaning that the CDDL terms of the included module have not been followed.

Am I right?--OlivierMiR (talk) 16:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's a few reasons for the incompatibility. I believe all the arguments for MPL vs GPL incompatibility (see http://www.tomhull.com/ocston/docs/mozgpl.html) should apply to CDDL. For example, section 3.5 of the CDDL says that "You may distribute the Executable form of the Covered Software under the terms of this License or under the terms of a license of Your choice", while the GPL requires that you distribute binaries under the terms of the GPL. Andareed (talk) 02:44, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The MPL vs. GPL article is full of nonsense. In addition, please note that the GPL does not require to put the resulting binaries under GPL - there is no such requirement in the GPL. It is even impossible to put the resulting binaries under GPL if you look at Linux as an example. On Linux, even with dynamic linking, such a binary would include identifyable parts from libc. As GPL and LGPL are incompatible, you would need to put libc under GPL in order to allow to have the permission to put binaries from GPLd programs under GPL. If you did this, you could no longer use any non GPL software on Linux as you did put your local copy of libc under GPL which is permitted but this change must be clearly marked and would be irreversible (see LGPL). The only requirement from the GPL for publishing binaries is to also publish full source.