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I would agree with insaneirish, if it was anybody but Oracle who held the CDDL-licensed code (I think IBM have ZFS-relevant patents, but no CDDL code in the Ope

by chalst 5y ago

I would agree with insaneirish, if it was anybody but Oracle who held the CDDL-licensed code (I think IBM have ZFS-relevant patents, but no CDDL code in the OpenZFS codebase). With anyone else, I'd say the legal risks were overwrought; we're talking two subtly mismatched copyleft licenses, so the idea that there is damage done by combing the codebases is legally weird and this kind of cursed-earth legal strategy is insane from a market giant. But as a wise man once said, don't anthropomorphise Oracle.

trasz 5y ago
Except Oracle is not the danger here: the license incompatibility is about GPL, not CDDL. I don’t think Oracle is going to sue anyone for GPL violation. And if it does, it could do that without CDDL in the picture.
- mbreese 5y ago
  Oracle also has a Linux distribution. So, I wouldn’t count them out as suing over a GPL/CDDL issue. I’d love to know who the harmed party would be in a lawsuit like that, but I’m sure that there would be no winners.
  - p_l 5y ago
    Their main approach would be pretty much the same as with Software Freedom Conservancy vs Canonical, afaik.
p_l 5y ago
The GPL-side license trolling happened way before Oracle was in talks to buy Sun. On Dtrace team (first CDDL licensed code) afaik the expectation was that they would see Dtrace integrated pretty fast in Linux. Of course, it's all anecdata (just like the opposite view about purposeful incompatibility from another Sun employee).