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On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 08:30:41PM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
> Mark Weinem wrote:
> >
> > So are there any known positions of the Board or of NetBSD-authorities
> > regarding
> > the CDDL? Is SUN's open source license okay with NetBSD?
>=20
> I don't know what the official policy is, but as much as I hate to say
> it, I think for the same reasons that we reject GPL for most things we
> should reject CDDL (or at least try to stay away from it.)  Don't get me
> wrong, I love CDDL for Solaris (and I release code under it), but it is
> nothing quite so liberal as the BSD license.  (At least it drops the
> viral nature of GPL, but it still creates a need to release source if
> you ship modified binaries.)
>=20
> I would therefore recommend avoiding the use of the CDDL by NetBSD
> whenever possible.

Why?

I agree we don't want to blindly CDDL (or APSL, which is about the same=20
thing) things, since the code does have encomberances we would be passing=
=20
on to others.

But for something like ZFS, do we really want to use something other than=
=20
Sun's code? 1) I expect we could get a fully-functional ported ZFS much=20
quicker than a from-scratch one. 2) If I understand the terms of the CDDL=
=20
right, if you follow it, Sun grants you a license to any patents Sun has=20
that involve the source. IANAL, but that seems like an advantage.

Also, my understanding of "You must inform recipients of any such Covered=
=20
Software in Executable form as to how they can obtain such Covered=20
Software in Source Code form in a reasonable manner on or through a medium=
=20
customarily used for software exchange." is that "cvs -d=20
anoncvs@anoncvs.netbsd.org:/cvsroot co -d zfs -D foo src/sys/fs/zfs" is a=
=20
"reasonable manner though which software is customarily exchanged.=20

While we certainly want to look at things on a case-by-case basis (and=20
also the board is the entity that really needs to decide), it seems to me=
=20
that there are times when the CDDL makes sense. And as long as we make it=
=20
clear to users of our code what is happening, they can make their own=20
decisions. :-)

Take care,

Bill

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