On 1/16/07, Jim Grisanzio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
However, it's well known that Sun has been involved in GPL v3 conversations all long, Java and OpenSPARC went out GPL v2, and GlassFish is GPLv2/CDDL. So if the company is actually considering v3 as an addition to CDDL for OpenSolaris, why not? Wouldn't that make sense? The company has a portfolio of open software that is unmatched at this point, so I'm sure the license gods are always considering the best strategy for a given piece of code. CDDL is a great license and it solved some major problems we had when opening this code, so I can't imagine it going away (which some are concerned about). But a dual strategy looks interesting. Also, there will be an enormous amount of software under v3 when it's done, so wouldn't that benefit us? Don't we want to grow faster?
I think there are going to be some practical issues that will prohibit a dual licensing strategy from being effective in the long term. In the short-term, it'll help somewhat though as you get a slight boost from people who have shied away since it wasn't under the GPL. However, Mozilla has had all sorts of issues with their triple-licensing strategy - and I'd hope that would sound the caution. At a high level, the issue is that as external GPLv3 code is imported into the tree (which is reported to be the impetus for this transition), they won't be able to be licensed under the CDDL alone. Plus, depending upon the final compatibility rules in the GPLv3 (which are still in flux), the CDDL may not be able to be combined with GPLv3-licensed code - so the CDDL won't apply to anything that uses the GPLv3 components - only the GPLv3 would apply. Hence, CDDL usage will diminish and will eventually be removed entirely as more and more GPLv3-only code is incorporated. This is what Mozilla has been fighting in its source tree - as certain developers only license their work under GPLv2, they can't distribute their patches under MPL or LGPL. It makes a giant mess out of distribution that they are still trying to effectively sort out. (I believe their solution has been to reject such contributions from the 'core' product.) So, I think a dual-license will hurt OpenSolaris more than it would help it. -- justin _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
