Yes — but the combined work must be released under the more restrictive license.
Common Development and Distribution License 1.0 is a file-level (or library-level) copyleft license. You can include Common Development and Distribution License 1.0 files in a Beerware License project; the Common Development and Distribution License 1.0 files retain their copyleft obligation (changes must be released), while the project at large can stay Beerware License. Keep file boundaries clear.
| License | Family | Patent grant |
|---|---|---|
| Common Development and Distribution License 1.0 (CDDL-1.0) | weak-copyleft | Yes |
| Beerware License (Beerware) | permissive | No (implicit at most) |
Common Development and Distribution License 1.0: File-level copyleft, similar in spirit to MPL.
Beerware License: Joke license: 'if we meet someday, you can buy me a beer.' Not legally rigorous.
If you found this page because you're trying to figure out whether shipping a particular dependency is safe, the answer above is a starting point — not a substitute for reading the actual licenses or talking to a lawyer when stakes are high.
LicenseHound walks every transitive dependency in your repo, maps each to its SPDX license, and flags pairs like this one in PR comments. The CLI is free; the team dashboard is paid.