From: Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH]: Add POSIX O_CLOFORK flag
To: Ricardo Branco <rbranco@suse.de>
Cc: Philip Guenther <guenther@gmail.com>, tech@openbsd.org
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2025 15:40:58 +0200

Hello,

Ricardo Branco wrote on Sun, Jun 22, 2025 at 01:42:51PM +0200:

> What is the policy for including CDDL code?
> The Illumos tests are CDDL.

That means we cannot use the Illumos tests.
If we want test coverage, someone has to sit down and write
new tests from scratch and put them under a free license.

Mostly due to ZFS, the CDDL comes up often enough that i think
making our position clear on policy.html would be beneficial.

While the criticism of the GPL and the Apache 2 license is well
known, awareness is less widespread in the general public of why
the CDDL is not a free license, so i deem explaining this in some
detail worthwhile.

What do developers think about the following patch to augment
https://www.openbsd.org/policy.html ?

Yours,
  Ingo


Index: policy.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/www/policy.html,v
diff -u -r1.45 policy.html
--- policy.html	25 Jul 2021 22:55:35 -0000	1.45
+++ policy.html	22 Jun 2025 13:21:16 -0000
@@ -334,6 +334,38 @@
 tools is a long-term desideratum.
 <p>
 
+<dt>CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License
+by Sun Microsystems)<dd><p>
+This is a copyleft license, see paragraph 3.1 of the license terms,
+so what was said above about the GPL applies.
+
+<p>
+While paragraph 3.6 of the license terms allows combination
+of CDDL-licensed code with code that is under other licenses,
+which makes it less hostile towards cooperative development
+than the GPL, that permission is not sufficient for making CDDL-licensed
+code suitable for inclusion into OpenBSD.  Due to the copfleft nature,
+OpenBSD still considers CDDL a non-free license.
+
+<p>
+There is a second reason why OpenBSD considers CDDL-licensed code
+unacceptable for inclusion.  It is not a pure Copyright license.
+Instead, paragraphs 2.1 and 2.2 taint it with aspects of patent
+and contract law, paragraph 6.2 states that license rights
+terminate for users who get into patent litigation with contributors
+over the software, and paragraph 6.1 states that license rights
+terminate for users violating license conditions, all of which makes
+the code not fully free.  On top of that, paragraphs 9 and 10 place
+additional, onerous contractual obligations on users and contributors.
+
+<p>
+While nobody is allowed to violate OpenBSD licensing terms, even people
+who violate the terms retain the right to use and redistribute OpenBSD
+in accordance with the terms.  That this right cannot be taken away
+ftom anyone for any reason is necessary for software to be truly free.
+CDDL-licensed code is not free in that sense.
+<p>
+
 <dt>NetBSD<dd><p>
 Much of OpenBSD is originally based on and evolved from NetBSD, since some
 of the OpenBSD developers were involved in the NetBSD project.  The general