Followup on Exhibit B licences

Danese Cooper danese at gmail.com
Thu Mar 15 05:07:14 UTC 2007


I can verify that when we borrowed the phrase from the OSL to put in
the CDDL, the intent was to try to close the non-distribution loophole
(aka the App Server Gap ;-) ).  This was documented when the CDDL was
submitted to OSI for approval.

Danese

On 3/14/07, Brian Behlendorf <brian at collab.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> > Timothy McIntyre wrote:
> >>>
> >> According to Sun's own explanation of the CDDL, "[w]herever software
> >> distribution is mentioned, [we] added the phrase "or otherwise makes
> >> available" to cover passive types of distribution, such as with ASPs."
> >> This explanation is posted on their website at
> >> http://www.sun.com/cddl/CDDL_why_details.html
> >
> > Thanks for posting that.  Interestingly, they don't mention it rationale
> > in the CDDL FAQ for OpenSolaris
> > (http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/faq/licensing_faq/), which would be
> > a pretty big omission since I think OpenSolaris is used quite often for
> > network servers.  Perhaps they've turned away from that interpretation?
>
> I think we need someone from Sun, or otherwise involved in defining the
> CDDL, to speak up on this point here, as it appears there is significant
> diversity of opinion on it.
>
> Which brings up the further question - if I build a web site on
> OpenSolaris, and deploy it publicly, am I making OpenSolaris "available"
> to the outside world?  I would guess not - I'm making my web site
> available, but to the outside world nothing distinguishes that web site
> running on OpenSolaris from one running on FreeBSD.  If I enabled sshd?
> With a guest sshd login?  Then, perhaps... yikes, talk about grey area!
>
>         Brian
>
>



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