6 ms·

But presumably, as copyright holders, Oracle is the entity that could try to enforce CDDL in court, in particular breaking the CDDL by mixing in GPL code in the

by e12e 9y ago

But presumably, as copyright holders, Oracle is the entity that could try to enforce CDDL in court, in particular breaking the CDDL by mixing in GPL code in the same (ie: OS) distribution? Oracle goes: we bought Sun, and hold copyright to ZFS (also at the point of the OpenZFS fork) - RedHat could respond: we got a license - the CDDL - and Oracle could respond, sure - but CDDL isn't compatible with GPL - so you're in breach of the CDDL?

boomboomsubban 9y ago
>But presumably, as copyright holders, Oracle is the entity that could try to enforce CDDL in court, in particular breaking the CDDL by mixing in GPL code in the same (ie: OS) distribution? Any Linux contributor could also try to enforce it, which is why the license incompatibility is the issue stopping them. Oracle holds no special power.
- e12e 9y ago
  True - but the incentives are a bit different. How many other Linux contributors[1] are selling a commercial operating system in direct competition with Linux as a general purpose Unix-like OS, with ZFS as one of the differentiating features? Most Linux contributors want Linux to succeed. I don't think it's at all clear that corporate Oracle prefers Linux to succeed - at least not if higher adoption of Solaris is an alternative. [1] (I guess IBM and Microsoft come to mind... but they don't have any special investment in ZFS)
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    There are thousands of Linux contributors, I don't care enough to check but I have to imagine Oracle has employed at least one. Any one of them could sue, and several have mentioned they're considering the option. The license issue is what's keeping Red Hat from using ZFS, not some rivalry with Oracle.
Nokinside 9y ago
How does mixing CDDL and GPL violate CDDL? The only issue I'm aware is that mixing the two would violate GPL.
- belorn 9y ago
  CDDL says: Source code must be licensed under CDDL. GPL says: Source code must be licensed under GPL. If you follow the conditions of GPL, you are violating the condition of the CDDL. If you are following the conditions of CDDL, you are violating the GPL. Basic binary logic. To add: "the engineers who had written the Solaris kernel requested that the license of OpenSolaris be GPL-incompatible". A license is really just an written intention of the author on what conditions copyright law restrictions may be legally ignored. In this case, those wishes had a very explicit intention. However those using the license today has had a general change of heart, and those with GPL interest has a general stance that no FOSS project will ever sue an other FOSS project over license incompatibility. As such, the risk of lawsuit is really just a company suing an other company under the technicality of incompatibility. Naturally some organizations won't intentionally break copyright law just because no one will sue.
  - Nokinside 9y ago
    Neither license forbids mixing with other licenses. As long as the demands of both are met, they can apply to the same source code. >If you are following the conditions of CDDL, you are violating the GPL. Basic binary logic. Relationship between licenses can be transitive but not commutative. As far as I know CDDL allows using with code under GPL but GPL does not allow using code under CDDL. CDDL copyright owners have no case, GPL copyright owners have. The question is: If I'm incorrect, what in CDDL prevents using with GPL?
    - belorn 9y ago
      If CDDL has no issue with GPL conditions, then follow the GPL and everything is fine. CDDL has this text: "Any Covered Software that You distribute or otherwise make available in Executable form must also be made available in Source Code form and that Source Code form must be distributed only under the terms of this License" So you take some CDDL code, and some GPL code, and you put that whole new source code tree under GPL in order to fullfill the GPL license condition. Are you then in compliance with the CDDL code? My concussion is that you are not, as that would be in conflict with the above condition of the CDDL. The source code tree would not be "distributed only under the terms of this license".
georgyo 9y ago
Oracle is not the one that could sue. There is nothing in the CDDL that prevents it being used else where. The GPL on the other hand is a strong copy left. If you link against GPL code, your code must also be licensed as GPL. This means the Linux copyright owners could sue the distributers of ZoL binaries, but Oracle could not. Oracle has the power to allow their ZFS code to be relicensed as GPL, removing this road block, but they have no incentive to do so.

by e12e 9y ago

boomboomsubban 9y ago

>But presumably, as copyright holders, Oracle is the entity that could try to enforce CDDL in court, in particular breaking the CDDL by mixing in GPL code in the same (ie: OS) distribution? Any Linux contributor could also try to enforce it, which is why the license incompatibility is the issue stopping them. Oracle holds no special power.

e12e 9y ago
True - but the incentives are a bit different. How many other Linux contributors[1] are selling a commercial operating system in direct competition with Linux as a general purpose Unix-like OS, with ZFS as one of the differentiating features? Most Linux contributors want Linux to succeed. I don't think it's at all clear that corporate Oracle prefers Linux to succeed - at least not if higher adoption of Solaris is an alternative. [1] (I guess IBM and Microsoft come to mind... but they don't have any special investment in ZFS)
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  There are thousands of Linux contributors, I don't care enough to check but I have to imagine Oracle has employed at least one. Any one of them could sue, and several have mentioned they're considering the option. The license issue is what's keeping Red Hat from using ZFS, not some rivalry with Oracle.

Nokinside 9y ago

How does mixing CDDL and GPL violate CDDL? The only issue I'm aware is that mixing the two would violate GPL.

belorn 9y ago
CDDL says: Source code must be licensed under CDDL. GPL says: Source code must be licensed under GPL. If you follow the conditions of GPL, you are violating the condition of the CDDL. If you are following the conditions of CDDL, you are violating the GPL. Basic binary logic. To add: "the engineers who had written the Solaris kernel requested that the license of OpenSolaris be GPL-incompatible". A license is really just an written intention of the author on what conditions copyright law restrictions may be legally ignored. In this case, those wishes had a very explicit intention. However those using the license today has had a general change of heart, and those with GPL interest has a general stance that no FOSS project will ever sue an other FOSS project over license incompatibility. As such, the risk of lawsuit is really just a company suing an other company under the technicality of incompatibility. Naturally some organizations won't intentionally break copyright law just because no one will sue.
- Nokinside 9y ago
  Neither license forbids mixing with other licenses. As long as the demands of both are met, they can apply to the same source code. >If you are following the conditions of CDDL, you are violating the GPL. Basic binary logic. Relationship between licenses can be transitive but not commutative. As far as I know CDDL allows using with code under GPL but GPL does not allow using code under CDDL. CDDL copyright owners have no case, GPL copyright owners have. The question is: If I'm incorrect, what in CDDL prevents using with GPL?
  - belorn 9y ago
    If CDDL has no issue with GPL conditions, then follow the GPL and everything is fine. CDDL has this text: "Any Covered Software that You distribute or otherwise make available in Executable form must also be made available in Source Code form and that Source Code form must be distributed only under the terms of this License" So you take some CDDL code, and some GPL code, and you put that whole new source code tree under GPL in order to fullfill the GPL license condition. Are you then in compliance with the CDDL code? My concussion is that you are not, as that would be in conflict with the above condition of the CDDL. The source code tree would not be "distributed only under the terms of this license".

georgyo 9y ago

Oracle is not the one that could sue. There is nothing in the CDDL that prevents it being used else where. The GPL on the other hand is a strong copy left. If you link against GPL code, your code must also be licensed as GPL. This means the Linux copyright owners could sue the distributers of ZoL binaries, but Oracle could not. Oracle has the power to allow their ZFS code to be relicensed as GPL, removing this road block, but they have no incentive to do so.