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Comment by Richard Yao, Gentoo dev and ZFS On Linux contributor [1]: ... there is no legal issue preventing the sources from being combined because nei
by lobster_johnson 11y ago
Comment by Richard Yao, Gentoo dev and ZFS On Linux contributor [1]:
... there is no legal issue preventing the sources
from being combined because neither the CDDL nor
the GPL place restrictions on aggregations of
source code, which is what putting ZFS into the
same tree as Linux would be. Binary modules built
from such a tree could be distributed with the
kernel's GPL modules under what the GPL considers
to be an aggregate. These concepts have passed
legal review by many parties.
[1] http://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/general-linux-open-source/827623-ubuntu-is-planning-to-make-the-zfs-file-system-a-standard-offering?p=827628#post827628 http://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/general-linux-...
- jamiesonbecker 11y ago"However, there is nothing in either license that prevents distributing it in the form of a binary module or in the form of source code." http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue Whether any loadable kernel module can be licensed under a different license than the GPL is still up for debate (even Linus says "sometimes"): http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Module-HOWTO/copyright.html http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Module-HOWTO/copyright.html (Of course, Ubuntu et al have been doing this for years e.g. with Nvidia or HBA binary blob drivers, so it does appear to be a mostly-settled issue..)
- ryao 11y agoThis was settled with the Andrew filesystem, which is a matter that I do not believe Linus considers up for debate. ZFS being a port from another system just like the Andrew filesystem is naturally in the same boat.