Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) is an open source and Free software license, produced by Sun Microsystems, based on the Mozilla Public License (MPL), version 1.1. The CDDL was submitted for approval to the Open Source Initiative on December 1, 2004 and 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 licenses listed as popular, widely used or with strong communities. ^[1] Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ... The GNU free software logo Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, is software which can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed without restriction. ... Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... In computing, the Mozilla Public License is an open source and free software license. ... The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software. ... December 1 is the 335th (in leap years the 336th) day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The previous licence used by Sun for its open source projects was the Sun Public License (SPL), also derived from the MPL. The CDDL licence is considered by Sun as a SPL version 2 [1]. Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... The Sun Public License (SPL) is a software license that applies to some open-source software released by Sun Microsystems (such as NetBeans). ... In computing, the Mozilla Public License is an open source and free software license. ... Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... The Sun Public License (SPL) is a software license that applies to some open-source software released by Sun Microsystems (such as NetBeans). ...

As the CDDL is derived from the MPL, some people claim that the license is not compatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL). The Free Software Foundation asserts[2] that it is a free license and that its incompatibility with GNU GPL is mainly due to some details. The GNU logo Wikisource has original text related to this article: GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ... The Free Software Foundation logo The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit organization founded in October 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement (free as in freedom), and in particular the GNU project. ...

Sun products released under CDDL:

• OpenSolaris (including DTrace, initially released alone, and ZFS)
• NetBeans IDE and RCP
• GlassFish
• JWSDP
• Project DReaM

OpenSolaris is an open source project created by Sun Microsystems to build a developer community around the Solaris Operating System technology. ... DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework released under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) in January 2005 and included in Suns Solaris 10 for troubleshooting system problems in real time. ... ZFS, is a free, open-source file system produced by Sun Microsystems for its Solaris operating system. ... NetBeans refers to both a platform for the development of Java desktop applications, and an integrated development environment (IDE) developed using the NetBeans Platform. ... GlassFish is the name of an open source development project for the next generation Sun Microsystems Java EE server. ... The Java Web Services Development Pack (JWSDP) is a free software development kit (SDK) for developing Web Services, web applications and Java applications with the newest technologies for Java. ... Project 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 [1]. DReaM is an acronym that stands for DRM everywhere/available. Suns primary goal in creating Project DReaM is to release an...

Controversy

Several people and groups have issues with the CDDL's terms and its compliance to various licensing rules, especially the Debian Free Software Guidelines (adapted from http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/08/msg00024.html and elsewhere) The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) are a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in the main, free software distribution of Debian. ...

• choice-of-venue (CDDL Section 9: "Any litigation relating to this License shall be subject to the jurisdiction of the courts located in the jurisdiction and venue specified in a notice contained within the Original Software, with the losing party responsible for costs, including, without limitation, court costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses."): the CDDL allows the author to "patch in" requirements about the location and jurisdiction of a legal dispute concerning the software. Some people claim that this can create an unforeseeable burden on the user of the software.
• No anonymity (CDDL Section 3.3: "You must include a notice in each of Your Modifications that identifies You as the Contributor of the Modification."): this could fail the dissident test. 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)

In the words of Danese Cooper, who is no longer with Sun, one of the reasons for basing the CDDL on the Mozilla licence was that the Mozilla licence is GPL-incompatible. Cooper stated, at the 6th annual Debian conference, that the engineers who had written the Solaris kernel requested that the licence 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". [3] The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) are a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in the main, free software distribution of Debian. ... Danese Cooper is an advocate of open-source software. ...

Simon Phipps (Sun's Chief Open Source Officer), in [4], expressly rejects Cooper's assertion.

References

External links

• License text of the CDDL 1.0
• Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) Information
• FAQ on CDDL on Open Solaris Site
• The Common Development and Distribution License, Linux Weekly News Editorial
• CDDL Analysis from a DFSG perspective, and Opinion Piece
• Free software licences