Sun Microsystems’ CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License) was submitted to and approved by the Open Source Initiative early this year, and its merits are being discussed at this week’s Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.
"We are seriously considering the CDDL and already started discussions with IBM and Sun," Sam Greenblatt of Computer Associates said.
Companies desiring to release software under the open source umbrella most often use the GPL, which doesn’t allow warranties and stipulates that any mixing of proprietary code with GPL-registered code must result in the combined code being released to the public.
Sun and Computer Associates both developed their own code to address these gaps, and the former’s CDDL is being suggested as the standard-bearer for a common commercial open source license.