The previous software license used by Sun for its free software/open source projects was the Sun Public License (SPL), also derived from the Mozilla Public License. The CDDL license is considered by Sun (now Oracle) to be SPL version 2.[3]
The CDDL was developed by a Sun Microsystems team (among them Solaris kernel engineer Andrew Tucker[4][5] and Claire Giordano[6]), based on the MPL version 1.1. On December 1, 2004 the CDDL was submitted for approval to the Open Source Initiative[6] and was approved as an open source license in mid January 2005. The second CDDL proposal, submitted in early January 2005, includes some corrections that prevent the CDDL from being in conflict with European Copyright law and to allow single developers to use the CDDL for their work.
In 2006 in the first draft of the OSI's license proliferation committee report, the CDDL is one of nine preferred licenses listed as popular, widely used, or with strong communities.[7]
While the Free Software Foundation also considered the CDDL a free software license, they claimed to see some incompatibilities with their GNU General Public License (GPL).[1]