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OpenZFS is the primary place where ZFS development happens and it's not managed by Oracle.

by cyphar 4y ago

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago
Yes that I am aware of, my fear is Oracle going on a legal rampage, not direct mismanagement.
- mekster 4y ago
  What are they going to do about it? They can't just relicense OpenZFS. The only attack vector is suing Ubuntu for distributing zfs because Canonical's lawyers think that's fine but even then, you're still free to use it by adding it to the system yourself like any other distribution is doing. Running a new filesystem is far more dangerous than your theoretical legal concerns.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    They can go after end users if they manage to find a business angle where they can start charging for the system. "But that's silly, Oracle wouldn't be bothered by small businesses, right?" https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/d1ttzp/oracle_is_going_after_companies_using_virtualbox/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/d1ttzp/oracle_is_...
    - mekster 4y ago
      How can they charge a product that's not their own?
    - cyphar 4y ago
      OpenZFS is licensed under a free software license. There's no mechanism by which they could demand anything. At best they could try to sue Canonical for CDDL violations, though the legal arguments online suggest that Oracle wouldn't have a leg to stand on here because the license incompatibility comes from the GPL side (meaning that Linux copyright holders might be able to sue Canonical but even that is a stretch since it's hard to argue OpenZFS is a derivative work of Linux). The thread you linked is someone who was using software with a proprietary license against its terms and is being asked to pay for its usage -- obviously I think Oracle is being scummy but it's not a comparable situation at all. This would be like saying that you won't use VS Code because Microsoft once demanded that someone who was using a cracked copy of Windows pay them -- it's a complete non-sequitur. Would you refuse to use ZFS on FreeBSD as well?

OpenZFS is the primary place where ZFS development happens and it's not managed by Oracle.

by cyphar 4y ago

OpenZFS is the primary place where ZFS development happens and it's not managed by Oracle.

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago

Yes that I am aware of, my fear is Oracle going on a legal rampage, not direct mismanagement.

mekster 4y ago
What are they going to do about it? They can't just relicense OpenZFS. The only attack vector is suing Ubuntu for distributing zfs because Canonical's lawyers think that's fine but even then, you're still free to use it by adding it to the system yourself like any other distribution is doing. Running a new filesystem is far more dangerous than your theoretical legal concerns.
- viraptor 4y ago
  They can go after end users if they manage to find a business angle where they can start charging for the system. "But that's silly, Oracle wouldn't be bothered by small businesses, right?" https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/d1ttzp/oracle_is_going_after_companies_using_virtualbox/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/d1ttzp/oracle_is_...
  - mekster 4y ago
    How can they charge a product that's not their own?
  - cyphar 4y ago
    OpenZFS is licensed under a free software license. There's no mechanism by which they could demand anything. At best they could try to sue Canonical for CDDL violations, though the legal arguments online suggest that Oracle wouldn't have a leg to stand on here because the license incompatibility comes from the GPL side (meaning that Linux copyright holders might be able to sue Canonical but even that is a stretch since it's hard to argue OpenZFS is a derivative work of Linux). The thread you linked is someone who was using software with a proprietary license against its terms and is being asked to pay for its usage -- obviously I think Oracle is being scummy but it's not a comparable situation at all. This would be like saying that you won't use VS Code because Microsoft once demanded that someone who was using a cracked copy of Windows pay them -- it's a complete non-sequitur. Would you refuse to use ZFS on FreeBSD as well?