Common Development and Distribution License
Encyclopedia
Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) is a free software license, produced by Sun Microsystems
, based on the Mozilla Public License
(MPL), version 1.1.
Files licensed under the CDDL can be combined with files licensed under other licenses, whether open source or proprietary.
The Free Software Foundation
considers it a free software
license that is incompatible
with the GNU General Public License
(GPL).
The incompatibility arises from a complex interaction of several clauses that the CDDL inherited from the MPL. The CDDL was submitted for approval to the Open Source Initiative
on December 1, 2004 and was approved as an open source license in mid January 2005. In the first draft of the OSI's license proliferation
committee report, the CDDL is one of nine preferred licenses listed as popular, widely used or with strong communities.
The previous license used by Sun
for its free software
/open source projects was the Sun Public License
(SPL), also derived from the Mozilla Public License
. The CDDL license is considered by Sun
to be SPL
version 2.
Example products released under CDDL:
The second CDDL proposal, submitted in early January 2005, includes some corrections that prevent the CDDL from being in conflict with European Copyright law and to allow single developers to use the CDDL for their work.
, who is no longer with Sun, one of the reasons for basing the CDDL on the Mozilla license was that the Mozilla license is GPL-incompatible
. Cooper stated, at the 6th annual Debian conference, that the engineers who had written the Solaris kernel requested that the license of OpenSolaris be GPL-incompatible. "Mozilla was selected partially because it is GPL incompatible. That was part of the design when they released OpenSolaris. [...] the engineers who wrote Solaris [...] had some biases about how it should be released, and you have to respect that."
Simon Phipps
(Sun's Chief Open Source Officer at the time), who had introduced Ms. Cooper as "the one who actually wrote the CDDL", did not immediately comment, but later in the same video, he says, referring back to the license issue, "I actually disagree with Danese to some degree", while describing the strong preference among the engineers who wrote the code for a BSD-like license, which was in conflict with Sun's preference for something copyleft, and that waiting for legal clearance to release some parts of the code under the then unreleased GNU GPL v3 would have taken several years, and would probably also have involved massed resignations from engineers (unhappy with either the delay, the GPL or both—this is not clear from the video).
Later, in September 2006, Phipps rejected Cooper's assertion in even stronger terms
The claimed incompatibility was also source of a controversy behind a partial relicensing of cdrtools
to the CDDL (which had been previously all GPL), which was declared legally undistributable by the Debian
project because the build system was licensed under the CDDL, even though the GPL requires that all scripts required to build the work to be licensed freely but not necessarily under the GPL, thus not causing an incompatibility that violates the license
. Jörg Schilling
, the author, claims smake to be an independent project and therefore not violating the GPLv3. (In the mean time, much of the cdrtools code has also been re-licenced under the CDDL.)
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
, based on the Mozilla Public License
Mozilla Public License
The Mozilla Public License is a free and open source software license. Version 1.0 was developed by Mitchell Baker when she worked as a lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation and version 1.1 at the Mozilla Foundation...
(MPL), version 1.1.
Files licensed under the CDDL can be combined with files licensed under other licenses, whether open source or proprietary.
The Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
considers it a free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
license that is incompatible
License compatibility
License compatibility refers to the problem with licenses applied to works subject to copyright, particularly licenses of software packages, which can contain contradictory requirements, rendering it impossible to combine source code from such packages or content from such works in order to create...
with the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
(GPL).
The incompatibility arises from a complex interaction of several clauses that the CDDL inherited from the MPL. The CDDL was submitted for approval to the Open Source Initiative
Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software.The organization was founded in February 1998, by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, prompted by Netscape Communications Corporation publishing the source code for its flagship Netscape Communicator product...
on December 1, 2004 and was approved as an open source license in mid January 2005. In the first draft of the OSI's license proliferation
License proliferation
License proliferation refers to the problems created when additional software licenses are written for software packages. License proliferation affects the free software community. Often when a software developer would like to merge portions of different software programs they are unable to do so...
committee report, the CDDL is one of nine preferred licenses listed as popular, widely used or with strong communities.
The previous license used by Sun
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
for its free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
/open source projects was the Sun Public License
Sun Public License
The Sun Public License is a software license that applies to some open-source software released by Sun Microsystems . It has been approved by the Free Software Foundation as a free software license, and by the Open Source Initiative as an open source license...
(SPL), also derived from the Mozilla Public License
Mozilla Public License
The Mozilla Public License is a free and open source software license. Version 1.0 was developed by Mitchell Baker when she worked as a lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation and version 1.1 at the Mozilla Foundation...
. The CDDL license is considered by Sun
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
to be SPL
Sun Public License
The Sun Public License is a software license that applies to some open-source software released by Sun Microsystems . It has been approved by the Free Software Foundation as a free software license, and by the Open Source Initiative as an open source license...
version 2.
Example products released under CDDL:
- OpenSolarisOpenSolarisOpenSolaris was an open source computer operating system based on Solaris created by Sun Microsystems. It was also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around the software...
(including DTraceDTraceDTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time...
, initially released alone, and ZFSZFSIn computing, ZFS is a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by Sun Microsystems. The features of ZFS include data integrity verification against data corruption modes , support for high storage capacities, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management,...
) - NetBeansNetBeansNetBeans refers to both a platform framework for Java desktop applications, and an integrated development environment for developing with Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Groovy, C, C++, Scala, Clojure, and others...
IDE and RCP - GlassFishGlassFishGlassFish is an open source application server project started by Sun Microsystems for the Java EE platform and now sponsored by Oracle Corporation. The supported version is called Oracle GlassFish Server...
- JWSDPJava Web Services Development PackThe Java Web Services Development Pack is a free software development kit for developing Web Services, Web applications and Java applications with the newest technologies for Java....
- Project DReaMProject DReaMProject DReaM is a Sun Microsystems project whose aim is to produce an "interoperable DRM architecture implementing standardized interfaces and processes for the interoperability of DRM systems". DReaM is an acronym that stands for "DRM everywhere/available"...
- Bourne shellBourne shellThe Bourne shell, or sh, was the default Unix shell of Unix Version 7 and most Unix-like systems continue to have /bin/sh - which will be the Bourne shell, or a symbolic link or hard link to a compatible shell - even when more modern shells are used by most users.Developed by Stephen Bourne at AT&T...
The second CDDL proposal, submitted in early January 2005, includes some corrections that prevent the CDDL from being in conflict with European Copyright law and to allow single developers to use the CDDL for their work.
GPL incompatibility controversy
In the words of Danese CooperDanese Cooper
Danese Cooper is an American programmer, computer scientist, and an advocate of open source software.- Career :"Open source allows people with a confluence of interesting ideas and an intellectual courage to really synthesize amazing newness...
, who is no longer with Sun, one of the reasons for basing the CDDL on the Mozilla license was that the Mozilla license is GPL-incompatible
License compatibility
License compatibility refers to the problem with licenses applied to works subject to copyright, particularly licenses of software packages, which can contain contradictory requirements, rendering it impossible to combine source code from such packages or content from such works in order to create...
. Cooper stated, at the 6th annual Debian conference, that the engineers who had written the Solaris kernel requested that the license of OpenSolaris be GPL-incompatible. "Mozilla was selected partially because it is GPL incompatible. That was part of the design when they released OpenSolaris. [...] the engineers who wrote Solaris [...] had some biases about how it should be released, and you have to respect that."
Simon Phipps
Simon Phipps (programmer)
Simon Phipps is a computer scientist and web and open source advocate.Phipps was instrumental in IBM's involvement in the Java programming language, founding IBM's Java Technology Center. He left IBM for Sun Microsystems in 2000, taking leadership of Sun's open source programme from Danese Cooper...
(Sun's Chief Open Source Officer at the time), who had introduced Ms. Cooper as "the one who actually wrote the CDDL", did not immediately comment, but later in the same video, he says, referring back to the license issue, "I actually disagree with Danese to some degree", while describing the strong preference among the engineers who wrote the code for a BSD-like license, which was in conflict with Sun's preference for something copyleft, and that waiting for legal clearance to release some parts of the code under the then unreleased GNU GPL v3 would have taken several years, and would probably also have involved massed resignations from engineers (unhappy with either the delay, the GPL or both—this is not clear from the video).
Later, in September 2006, Phipps rejected Cooper's assertion in even stronger terms
The claimed incompatibility was also source of a controversy behind a partial relicensing of cdrtools
Cdrtools
cdrtools is a collection of independent projects of free software/open source computer programs, created by Jörg Schilling and others under the GNU General Public License ....
to the CDDL (which had been previously all GPL), which was declared legally undistributable by the Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
project because the build system was licensed under the CDDL, even though the GPL requires that all scripts required to build the work to be licensed freely but not necessarily under the GPL, thus not causing an incompatibility that violates the license
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
. Jörg Schilling
Jörg Schilling
Jörg Schilling is a computer programmer who has worked extensively on compact disc burning software, the Solaris Operating System and the OpenSolaris project. He studied originally as an electrical engineer at the Technical University of Berlin...
, the author, claims smake to be an independent project and therefore not violating the GPLv3. (In the mean time, much of the cdrtools code has also been re-licenced under the CDDL.)
See also
- Free software licenceFree software licenceA free software licence is a software licence which grants recipients rights to modify and redistribute the software, which would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law. A free software licence grants, to the recipients, freedoms in the form of permissions to modify or distribute copyrighted work...
- Mozilla Public LicenseMozilla Public LicenseThe Mozilla Public License is a free and open source software license. Version 1.0 was developed by Mitchell Baker when she worked as a lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation and version 1.1 at the Mozilla Foundation...
- BSD License
- Dual-licensing
- GNU Free Documentation LicenseGNU Free Documentation LicenseThe GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...
- GNU Lesser General Public LicenseGNU Lesser General Public LicenseThe GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
- GNAT Modified General Public LicenseGNAT Modified General Public LicenseThe GNAT Modified General Public License is a version of the GNU General Public License specifically modified for the generic feature found in the Ada programming language.The modification is as follows:...
- List of software licenses