Sun Details Open Solaris Licensing Plans

Sun Microsystems Inc. will use the CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License) for its Open Solaris project, and also will announce Tuesday that it is making the source code to its DTrace technology, found in the upcoming Solaris 10 operating system, immediately available to developers.

But the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company plans to keep the Solaris trademark and all distribution rights associated with that, so the Sun Solaris software brand will continue to be made available as a supported distribution by the company, with value-added services and support offered at a charge on top of that.

un submitted the CDDL to the OSI (Open Source Initiative) for approval in December, but declined to say what it intended to use the license for. As previously reported in eWEEK, it was widely expected that this would be the license used for the Open Solaris Project if approved.

The OSI approved the license earlier this month, and John Loiacono, Sun’s executive vice president of software, will officially announce the license’s use for Open Solaris on Tuesday, Tom Goguen, vice president of Sun’s operating platforms group, told eWEEK.

“Developers will be given access to the source code and will be allowed to modify the code covered by the CDDL, but those modifications will have to be shared back with the community. This is also a very friendly license for OEMs,” Goguen said.

Also, as first reported in eWEEK, developers agreeing to the CDDL will get access to all of the technology rights of more than 1,600 patents associated with Solaris and Open Solaris.

Entire 2 Page Article at eWeek