Russ Weeks wrote:
Hi,
There are a number of really interesting technologies in the
OpenSolaris kernel that I'd like to integrate with, but I need to get
some more information about OpenSolaris licensing before I can
recommend them to my boss. Can anybody point me to some resources for
this? Ideally written for laypeople but legalese is OK too.
The specific scenarios I'm interested in are as follows:
- "vanilla" device driver implementation, ie. purely through ddi*
interfaces. In this case, I believe OpenSolaris doesn't impose any
licensing restrictions.
Correct.
- integration with Consolidation Private source code, ie. blk2scsa.
In this case, I believe there's some question of shared ownership of
the code between my company and Sun.
If you want to use Consolidation Private interfaces, then you usually
need to become part of the consolidation. The *easiest* way to do this
is to open source code, with a CDDL and an SCA. (The SCA gives Sun
equal ownership in your code, but doesn't take away any of your own
rights. This allows Sun to relicense or derive new products from it,
without your permission. I think the main reason for this is to allow
Sun to react if some problem were found that required relicensing under
a new version of the CDDL. It also frees Sun from the requirement to
distribute separate source code if it ships binaries with other closed
source projects -- e.g. with Solaris 10.)
Now, there are other options as well.
They include:
1) taking the risk and shipping code that uses these interfaces, but
without any guarantee that we won't break the interfaces without notice.
2) requesting a contract for your use of the interfaces. (This is not
"legal" contract, but simply an agreement between the interface supplier
and you that we won't break interfaces without coordinating with you first.)
3) requesting that the interfaces be raised to public DDI status. In
many cases this might be possible. (I'd be willing to consider doing
this for blk2scsa if there was a sufficient need demonstrated. The only
reason its not been raised higher is that I think we need more
experience with it first. The blk2scsa interface is still fairly new
and I'd like to see more drivers converted to use it so that I know that
the interface is adequate as is.)
- use of the Kernel Sockets API... I know this is a recent addition to
the kernel, maybe it falls under consolidation private.
I think so.
- Garrett
Any help here is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Russ
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