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Official nod for Sun open-source license

The Open Source Initiative's license approval committee has given a vote of support to Sun Microsystems' license.

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
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Stephen Shankland
The 's license approval committee has given a vote of support to Sun Microsystems' license. In late December, the committee recommended that Sun's Community Development and Distribution License (CDDL) be granted official status as an open-source license, Chairman Russell Nelson said in an e-mail posting. The recommendation still must be approved by OSI's board, Nelson added.

Sun submitted the license, a variant of the Mozilla Public License, in December, then updated it later that month. The license likely will be used to govern Sun's Solaris operating system, one of several versions of Unix and a product Sun plans to release as open-source software this month. The move is intended to make Sun's Solaris a stronger competitor to Linux and Windows.