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Open is Open.Open is Open.Posted Nov 10, 2005 2:01 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341)In reply to: Open is Open. by cventers Parent article: Debian and Nexenta collide
>> In other words, the CDDL does not license any patents for use in >> derived products. URL please? I don't think Jon ever wrote anything as misinformed as that. However, it does sound like it could be from the Solaris 10 "review" which ran here after release of S10, by Joe "Zonker (??)" Brockheimer, where, rather than reviewing S10 in any meaningful way, he instead used the article as a platform for general Sun bashing and FUD wrt to the (not yet released at that stage) OpenSolaris project. That article still sticks in my throat ;).
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Open is Open. Posted Nov 10, 2005 2:15 UTC (Thu) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] http://lwn.net/Articles/114839/Seems pretty accurate to me. You have to get the terminology straight for a straight reading of the CDDL. The patent grant is here: >> (b) under Patent Claims infringed by the making, using or selling of >> Original Software, to make, have made, use, practice, sell, and offer >> for sale, and/or otherwise dispose of the Original Software (or >> portions thereof). "Original Software" is the unmodified software, released under the CDDL, by Sun. They agree not to pursue you for using the unmodified software.
Open is Open. Posted Nov 10, 2005 3:25 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] Ah, right. Yes, that is quite restrictive at first reading. Reasonably sure there are good legal reasons for that. The most obvious perhaps being the difficulty of determining at what point transformations of a work cross from derived to original. That'd be a huge grey area to get into, both for Sun, for contributors to the CDDL and for users. From a practical POV, it's maybe not quite as restrictive as it may seem. Note that the grant extends to the Original Software and portions thereof, so you may (by my Joe Bloggs, IANAL, ordinary member of the public reading) strip down the Original Software and use the portion you want, under the terms of the CDDL and that grant. Functional, non-expressive modifications might still be allowed, as they don't affect copyright at least - however I'm uncertain if that extends both ways (ie an author can snarf such modifications at will, does it go the other way? I don't know). Ie, my inclination would be to apply Occam's razor and take the view that its phrased as it is so as to provide clarity as to the exact reach of the patent grants, rather than as some sinister plot by Sun to sue people for patent breaches. I honestly don't think Sun are interested in suing people for modifying CDDL code as long as they honour the CDDL. Nor do Sun have any track record of patent litigation (well, other than being threatened or sued ;) ). You might want to bring this up on the CAB-Discuss, might be good to explore it there further, to see what the intent was with that clause and whether or not, if the language does not properly reflect the intent, it would be possible to modify it in a future version of the licence.
Open is Open. Posted Nov 10, 2005 4:32 UTC (Thu) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] paulj, please see my other response.
Open is Open. Posted Nov 10, 2005 8:56 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link] Remeber the day last year when Microsoft and Sun became friends? "Microsoft is to pay $700m to Sun to settle anti-trust issues and $900m to resolve patent issues. It is also making an up-front payment of $350m to Sun to cover patent royalties for server products." It that's not a serious source of income for Sun, I don't know what is. And whether Sun would sue free software developers in the future is not something we have on paper, management change and Sun has a rocky ride ahead. Nobody knows what'll happen then.
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