No breach of CDDL terms here [LWN.net]

No breach of CDDL terms here

Posted Aug 22, 2011 23:26 UTC (Mon) by webmink (guest, #47180)
In reply to: Modules by trasz
Parent article: SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Since no CDDL-licensed file appears to be being modified or merged with KVM, I can see no reason at all why KVM needs to be covered by CDDL. Remember CDDL is a file-l;evel, weak copyleft license like the MPL (or indeed in some circumstances like LGPL) and thus merely loading KVM into the Illumos kernel does not create a need for KVM to be CDDL-licensed.

to post comments

No breach of CDDL terms here

Posted Aug 23, 2011 1:17 UTC (Tue) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

It's true that there's probably no breach of the CDDL here, but the GPL requires that the entire work be available under terms compatible with the GPL. If the final work is a derivative of both CDDLed work and GPLed work, then the CDDLed work also needs to be available under terms compatible with the GPL. The question of whether it's a derivative work of the CDDLed code is one that's determined by law and the courts, not by the CDDL.