On 8/16/2010 3:20 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
From: Ray Arachelian [mailto:r...@arachelian.com]
The point was that
_additions_ to IllumOS should not necessarily be licensed under a
license that allows them to be improved and then closed by third
parties. So that, IF they make their way into Solaris proper, Oracle
(or hell, Microsoft) would be required to provide source code for said
improvements. Nothing more than that.
I think you're saying, you believe, that since Oracle is the copyright
holder on some code, and then somebody contributes to it, you think Oracle
is then the copyright holder of the contributions too. I'd like to know if
I misunderstand what you're saying, or why you believe that?
When something open-source has contributions, it becomes portions copyright
the original copyright holder, and portions copyright the contributor. In
CDDL, this is spelled out as:
(pasted from CDDL to here):
"Original Software" means the Source Code and Executable form of computer
software code that is originally released under this License.
"Contributor Version" means the combination of the Original Software, prior
Modifications used by a Contributor (if any), and the Modifications made by
that particular Contributor.
I don't see any reason at all to believe contributions are in any way
assigned to oracle, or able to become closed by oracle.
that is correct, Ned.
Both the Solaris and Java development processes here at Oracle use
something called the "Sun Contributor Agreement" (SCA), if you want your
code to be pushed into the main Java or Solaris repositories that Oracle
maintains.
The SCA doesn't assign your copyright to Oracle, but it does grant
Oracle a perpetual, unrevokable, worldwide,
do-whatever-I-want-with-your-code-and-you-can't-stop-me license to that
code. Call it a price Sun/Oracle charges to insert your code into the
main JDK/Solaris tree.
This is very similar to what the FSF does with much of the GNU tools,
with the exception that the FSF actually wants you to assign your
copyright to them, so that your code contribution to the project
actually becomes copyright-owned by the FSF.
In either case, you certainly were free to create your own code, and
distribute it separately from the Oracle or FSF codebase, without having
to agree to a separate SCA or copyright assignment. You only had to
agree to the basic license that the code came with (CDDL or GPL).
Given that the IllumOS project is starting with CDDL code that they can
never relicense in any meaningful way (except by subsequent CDDL
versioning), this kind of trick can't work for IllumOS. In this manner,
IllumOS will end up very much like the Linux kernel - it's only ever
going to be available under a single license (there can't be
multi-licensed types). It's too bad, but it's also not by any means a
serious roadblock.
--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop: usca22-123
Phone: x17195
Santa Clara, CA
Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)
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