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I get it during the Sun years, but why the hell does Oracle continue developing Btrfs when they can just release ZFS under a GPL-compatible license and be done
by CathyWest 8y ago
I get it during the Sun years, but why the hell does Oracle continue developing Btrfs when they can just release ZFS under a GPL-compatible license and be done with it? It reallys seems like they are working against their own interests here.
- coredog64 8y agoThey’re still selling Solaris licenses to enterprises. If they keep the FUD churning they can continue to suck what is essentially free money from those customers.
- CathyWest 8y agoDoes a GPL-compatible ZFS really detract from their FUD churning Solaris business, though? Those customers can't redistribute Solaris any more than they can redistribute Linux with a CDDL-licensed ZFS. If they really wanted to switch to Linux they could do so today and be in the exact same legal position license-wise. Not to mention they could switch to FreeBSD and be able to redistribute, but again, I doubt this is something very many Solaris users care about. Perhaps the cost of porting their applications away from Solaris is too high, or their middle managers are Oracle fanboys, whatever the reason is, a GPL-compatible ZFS does not threaten that business model. I think a more likely reason why they pour money into the Btrfs death march while having a turnkey solution just sitting around in the next office over waiting to be singed off by the legal department as CDDL+GPL or Apache or whatever is that each project is the pet of a different pointy-haired boss and they refuse to cooperate internally.