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I believe that Bryan Cantrill has stated that it was surprising to the people at Sun when outside parties didn't start incorporating ZFS and other technologies

I believe that Bryan Cantrill has stated that it was surprising to the people at Sun when outside parties didn't start incorporating ZFS and other technologies into Linux, because the original intention when the CDDL was written was not to be GPL-incompatible. Edit: dwrensha posted a related comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11176361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11176361) with a YouTube link of Bryan making the statement.

Dylan16807 11y ago
If that was the intent, is it not something that can be clarified and fix the problem? Or did they screw up too badly and it's unambiguously incompatible no matter what they say?
- DominoTree 11y ago
  It may be the case that now there's simply nobody who cares in a position to actually get it fixed
  - gherkin0 11y ago
    Yeah. If there's an unintended license-compatibility problem, the people who'd need to fix it are Oracle's lawyers. They might have a different attitude towards Open Source than Sun, to put it mildly.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      Wouldn't a clarification of intent be based on evidence from the people that created the license? It doesn't matter what the lawyers think, they can't change history. You'd need the lawyers to relicense, a completely different way to solve the issue.
      - lmm 11y ago
        Intent and two dollars will get you a cup of coffee. The court will read the license that was written, not the one that Sun intended to write.
        Dylan16807 11y ago
        Yes and no. If they actually wrote the wrong thing, then intent is irrelevant. But if the meaning of a term is unclear, then you can clarify the meaning.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
  The problem is not the CDDL but the GPL in that case. That's the same reason GPL2 and GPL3 are incompatible.
  - belorn 11y ago
    That is easy to disprove. If CDDL did not care, then one could follow the conditions in GPLv2 and the two licenses would be compatible. License incompatibility can only occur if two license has conditions which are mutually exclusive. In this case, CDDL demands that source code must be distributed only under the terms of CDDL, and GPLv2 require that the distributed source code is made available under GPLv2. You can not comply with one without breaking the other, and thus we have license incompatibility.
    - the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
      > That is easy to disprove. If CDDL did not care, then one could follow the conditions in GPLv2 and the two licenses would be compatible. The entire point of the CDDL is that it's module local. The only way to achieve GPL compatibility is to become the GPL. That would be impossible for the CDDL to do.
- tw04 11y ago
  Why would Oracle spend any time correcting it? If you haven't figured out by now Oracle won't spend money on anything they don't think will make them money, I'm not sure what to tell you. And clarifying this doesn't seem like a path that would make them any amount of money.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    I doubt that every single person that could clarify is employed by Oracle in 2016. But my understanding after reading everything else is that the license is blatantly incompatible and there is no possible clarification that could fix it.
gillianseed 11y ago
I'm going to go with the actual author of the licence (Danese), and not just because she authored it but because the idea that Sun management, seeing themselves struggle against Linux, would allow Linux to use their prized ZFS and DTrace, and thus offer even less reason to choose Solaris over Linux is simply insane from any kind of business point. And not even now do we have anyone arguing here that CDDL is not GPL-incompatible, people accept that and Linus refuses to merge any CDDL code in to mainline, what is being discussed here is if ZFS counts as a derivative (and thus has to be GPL compatible) when it runs as a kernel module in Linux kernel space.

Dylan16807 11y ago

If that was the intent, is it not something that can be clarified and fix the problem? Or did they screw up too badly and it's unambiguously incompatible no matter what they say?

DominoTree 11y ago
It may be the case that now there's simply nobody who cares in a position to actually get it fixed
- gherkin0 11y ago
  Yeah. If there's an unintended license-compatibility problem, the people who'd need to fix it are Oracle's lawyers. They might have a different attitude towards Open Source than Sun, to put it mildly.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    Wouldn't a clarification of intent be based on evidence from the people that created the license? It doesn't matter what the lawyers think, they can't change history. You'd need the lawyers to relicense, a completely different way to solve the issue.
    - lmm 11y ago
      Intent and two dollars will get you a cup of coffee. The court will read the license that was written, not the one that Sun intended to write.
      - Dylan16807 11y ago
        Yes and no. If they actually wrote the wrong thing, then intent is irrelevant. But if the meaning of a term is unclear, then you can clarify the meaning.
the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
The problem is not the CDDL but the GPL in that case. That's the same reason GPL2 and GPL3 are incompatible.
- belorn 11y ago
  That is easy to disprove. If CDDL did not care, then one could follow the conditions in GPLv2 and the two licenses would be compatible. License incompatibility can only occur if two license has conditions which are mutually exclusive. In this case, CDDL demands that source code must be distributed only under the terms of CDDL, and GPLv2 require that the distributed source code is made available under GPLv2. You can not comply with one without breaking the other, and thus we have license incompatibility.
  - the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
    > That is easy to disprove. If CDDL did not care, then one could follow the conditions in GPLv2 and the two licenses would be compatible. The entire point of the CDDL is that it's module local. The only way to achieve GPL compatibility is to become the GPL. That would be impossible for the CDDL to do.
tw04 11y ago
Why would Oracle spend any time correcting it? If you haven't figured out by now Oracle won't spend money on anything they don't think will make them money, I'm not sure what to tell you. And clarifying this doesn't seem like a path that would make them any amount of money.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  I doubt that every single person that could clarify is employed by Oracle in 2016. But my understanding after reading everything else is that the license is blatantly incompatible and there is no possible clarification that could fix it.

gillianseed 11y ago

I'm going to go with the actual author of the licence (Danese), and not just because she authored it but because the idea that Sun management, seeing themselves struggle against Linux, would allow Linux to use their prized ZFS and DTrace, and thus offer even less reason to choose Solaris over Linux is simply insane from any kind of business point. And not even now do we have anyone arguing here that CDDL is not GPL-incompatible, people accept that and Linus refuses to merge any CDDL code in to mainline, what is being discussed here is if ZFS counts as a derivative (and thus has to be GPL compatible) when it runs as a kernel module in Linux kernel space.