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0 pointsSanddancer9y ago0 comments

> The CDDL has a provision that if any part is held unenforcible it will be modified to make it enforceable. As a matter of licensing, that's incredibly devious and bad. There's other super dodgy parts of the CDDL that make it a bad license purely from a license point of view, let alone from "freedoms given to users" perspective.

No, that's a pretty standard severability clause that helps the user. It means that if one section of the CDDL is found invalid, users can still use the software. The GPL on the other hand, by refusing to have a severability clause, means that if any part of the GPL, no matter how inconsequential, is found invalid, the entire license is null and void and no one can use it. That intentional omission makes the GPL a much more user-hostile license than it should be.

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cyphar9y ago

> > The CDDL has a provision that if any part is held unenforcible it will be modified to make it enforceable. As a matter of licensing, that's incredibly devious and bad. There's other super dodgy parts of the CDDL that make it a bad license purely from a license point of view, let alone from "freedoms given to users" perspective.

> No, that's a pretty standard severability clause that helps the user. It means that if one section of the CDDL is found invalid, users can still use the software. The GPL on the other hand, by refusing to have a severability clause, means that if any part of the GPL, no matter how inconsequential, is found invalid, the entire license is null and void and no one can use it. That intentional omission makes the GPL a much more user-hostile license than it should be.

The GPL's severability clause says that the section is invalid, not the whole license. But the CDDL allows for the license to be changed after the fact.

SanddancerOP9y ago

Severability was intentionally removed in GPLv3 to make it an all or nothing license. The FSF's rationale is that if they made it an all or nothing, it would be less likely for courts to find any clause unenforceable. Whether or not this will stay true in practice remains to be seen.

I was incorrect in remembering what the CDDL had if a clause is found to be unenforceable. A reform clause has a lot of overlap with severability. While a contract can be altered in such a case, reform means that the spirit of the unenforceable clause must remain intact. Were it severable, then the entire clause would be excised, potentially altering the license much more through omission.