6 ms·

Read maybe three comments deep in the actual PR[0], and you'll get the impression this is definitely not going to ever be merged. I've said it 1000x -- OpenZFS

Read maybe three comments deep in the actual PR[0], and you'll get the impression this is definitely not going to ever be merged. I've said it 1000x -- OpenZFS is already free and open source. Linux kernel developers should just stop punching themselves in face. The ZFS hair shirt is self imposed by semi-religious Linux wackadoos. [0]: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20230626214656.hcp4puionmtoloat@moria.home.lan/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20230626214656.hcp4puionmtoloat...

dralley 3y ago
I've read several such LKML threads about bcachefs and while the discussions have been contentious (and Kent could stand to chill out a bit), everyone has been in agreement that they'd like to see bcachefs succeed and be merged. The major technical blockers have been addressed or are being addressed. Bcachefs also has plenty of features which ZFS does not, so I don't see why you're so critical. Oracle could relicense ZFS at any time, or make an explicit statement about its legal status. They have not done so after 10 years.
- gigatexal 3y ago
  yeah i love love love ZFS and use it everywhere and am very excited to see Bcachefs get merged. More legit competition in this space is good. Btrfs doesn't apply, it's not even in the same league.
- mustache_kimono 3y ago
  >I've read several such LKML threads about bcachefs and while the discussions have been contentious (and Kent could stand to chill out a bit), everyone has been in agreement that they'd like to see bcachefs succeed and be merged. Bcachefs also has plenty of features which ZFS does not, so I don't see why you're so critical. Only because I've read this story more than a few times before? See: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22bcachefs%22%20merge&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... >Oracle could relicense ZFS at any time, or make an explicit statement about its legal status. They have not done so after 10 years. Any legal difficulty remains from the GPL side, and no suit has been brought in the years upon years of the GPL hair shirts screaming about non-compliance. Unfortunately, the GPL hair shirts don't have much (any) credibility on the subject of what the GPL means. Bring the suit or STFU. I have no patience for armchair legal opinions from people who won't put their money where their mouth is. Stop spreading legal FUD!
  - dralley 3y ago
    Notably, Oracle does not include ZFS with Oracle Linux. As I said, they could easily clear this up, but they haven't.
    - mustache_kimono 3y ago
      I knew your pen name was familiar because I was liking your other comments in the recent RH threads. What's amusing is I previously thought RH was far too precious re: its interpretation of the GPL, especially re: ZFS. > Notably, Oracle does not include ZFS with Oracle Linux. As I said, they could easily clear this up, but they haven't. > Oracle could relicense ZFS at any time, or make an explicit statement about its legal status. They have not done so after 10 years. That would make this easy, but unfortunately easy is not the case we have here. Just as RH has chosen strict compliance with the GPL re RHEL, I think strict compliance with the GPLv2 is what is required here. Someone, I wish it was RH, should say "We've made a mistake. The GPL is not a suicide pact." For instance, interpreting any object which dynamically links to a GPL licensed work as a derived work is fundamentally anti-business, anti-interoperability, and, I'd argue, anti-FOSS. Being GPL compliant does not mean blithely accepting whatever legal claptrap FSF and SFC can summon.
  - m45t3r 3y ago
    > Only because I've read this story more than a few times before? See: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22bcachefs%22%20merge&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Sorry, if we are looking at the same thing, the earliest time of a HN entry of bcachefs trying to be merged upstream was not even 1 month ago. All the other entries are related to features that are called "merge" and not actual merge requests or the author declaring that the code was up to be merged but not an actual merge request. 1 month ago is nothing in terms of kernel time, so I don't think your argument holds up.
    - viraptor 3y ago
      There was a previous attempt 4 years ago. It's normal that there's some pushback and things get worked on for some more time. Nothing that indicates a serious problem here. Kent worked on the filesystem overall rather than addressing the comments and resubmitting immediately. (But that's still a single initial attempt, not "a few" like the OP claimed)
- mastax 3y ago
  Oracle could relicense its own ZFS (probably?) But it couldn't relicense the ZFS everyone actually uses because they don't own the copyrights of independent contributors, some of whom oppose license changes.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
kaliszad 3y ago
I would like for OpenZFS to get merged into Linux but to be more realistic, even DTrace didn't get merged and that is code that was actually relicensed to GPL (UPL for the user space): https://www.theregister.com/2018/02/19/oracle_open_sources_dtrace_changes_licence_to_gpl/ https://www.theregister.com/2018/02/19/oracle_open_sources_d... Frankly, it is more likely, distributions will add/ solidify infrastructure for making OpenZFS really hassle-free and well integrated and cloud/ VPS providers will have alternative images built with Root-on-ZFS. Until then, it is not that hard to convert a VM from EXT4 to OpenZFS or to build your own image. Shameless plug, I have done a video about a procedure how to convert EXT4 to OpenZFS from within the VM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoRVFRufZI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoRVFRufZI0 Or you can just open the notes and copy&paste from there: https://github.com/KaliszAd/ext4-to-zfs-conversion https://github.com/KaliszAd/ext4-to-zfs-conversion
- intelVISA 3y ago
  Thanks for the info, I know painfully little of modern filesystems: without opening too many worm cans ZFS > XFS as a general purpose ext4 replacement?
  - kaliszad 3y ago
    It depends, but as a rule of thumb for more traditional servers and development workstations ZFS is a superior choice. You can probably look at https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#fmzfs https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#fmzfs to get a quick and straight forward introduction. For me, ZFS beats other approaches with snapshots/ rollbacks and send/ receive. It really hits you, when you develop something using a database or a lot of files. If you want to test something, just do a snapshot (even without shutting down the database) and just try it out. If you mess up, you can at the very least shut the DB down, rollback (which is instant) and start the DB again. It will be in the state before you messed up. You can also make a clone and spin up another instance and compare. With files, you can even diff snapshots, so as to extract e.g. a deleted file. Also this is a great mitigation against ransomware, if your network drives are backed by ZFS. Also in the case of a database, compression and the integrity guarantees help a lot. You can do some tuning because of it that might make your performance better/ more consistent - because backups can get a lot more efficient and you can cache more data in RAM when it is compressed or buy better SSDs when they don't need to be that large. Now you can probably do something similar with btrfs, e.g. Turris Omnia is using btrfs internally and it saved me once while I was doing some broader reconfiguration. Otherwise, I don't know about it - it is probably reliable enough. You can do LVM snapshots. There are many approaches to solve a particular problem. ZFS was just designed to do some of these things and has about 15 years of production use in some of the most serious settings. XFS or EXT4 is a decent choice for systems that you just don't want to think about. They are available by default, don't usually need any kind of tuning/ configuration. XFS is probably the better choice instead of EXT4, if you have a typical mdadm/ lvm RAID for e.g. surveillance camera recordings. For VMs that do some computation but the data is stored elsewhere, you can use the usually default EXT4 for the base filesystem. Converting such systems to ZFS might not be worth it. For the company database, filer, archive, backup ZFS should be something you evaluate as the first option. Just be sure you know a bit about how ZFS stores its data and how to configure the values for your use case. ZFS is more rigid in some places however extremely flexible in others be sure to understand where the rigid parts might be a problem to you.
ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
If I had to choose between Linux and Oracle to determine which one is operating in bad faith, I most certainly would not be thinking that it was Linux.
- mustache_kimono 3y ago
  > If I had to choose between Linux and Oracle to determine which one is operating in bad faith, I most certainly would not be thinking that it was Linux. I just want to pause for a moment to explain how unhinged this reply is. First, never said Linux (or Oracle for that matter) was operating in bad faith. Second, my comment calls ZFS a "hair shirt" for the kernel. A "hair shirt" is an uncomfortable undergarment which religious people/GPL fanatics use to punish themselves.
  - adql 3y ago
    ZFS people can just change license that was explicity written to be GPL hostile to something non-retarded
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      No, they literally cannot. The current OpenZFS codebase is the combination of the original Sun/Oracle-owned code and a massive number of new committers. Now, Oracle could relicense the original code, but they can't do anything about the later additions, because they don't own the copyright on those. The only maybe possible carve out is if the code is licensed with something like "CDDL 1.0 or later" then they could make a new version, but I'm not clear on whether that's an option or whether the code is licensed CDDL 1.0-only. IANAL, YMMV. (EDIT: Apparently the CDDL already has a version 1.0 and 1.1? So take exact versions with a grain of salt above.)
    - arp242 3y ago
      This is a myth that keeps coming up, in spite of being debunked time and time and time again. Solaris could not use the GPL because Sun didn't own the rights to all parts, so the GPL's copyleft wouldn't work and they needed a new license. When OpenSolaris was released it wasn't 100% free/open source (some parts were later rewritten under OpenSolaris, and illumos completed that and is 100% free/open source). In hindsight, an explicit "GPL compatibility clause" like the EUPL has would clearly been a wiser choice, but that wasn't clear in 2005, and it's too late for that now, unfortunately. On the other hand, you could also blame the GPL for not recognizing that other copyleft licenses exist; they also could have written a compatibility clause in GPL 3. "CDDL is incompatible with the GPL" could also be phrased as "GPL is incompatible with the CDDL".
lizknope 3y ago
OpenZFS is free and open source but that license has been determined to NOT be GPL compatible by some lawyers. If your lawyer says it is fine then go ahead and make your own distribution where you include it as a separate module. Oracle, the current owner of ZFS, is one of the most litigious companies in the tech world. There is a bunch of explanations and legal opinions here. https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/License.html https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/License.html
- mustache_kimono 3y ago
  > OpenZFS is free and open source but that license has been determined to NOT be GPL compatible by some lawyers. Oh? And let me tell you there is more than a boat load of lawyers who disagree. See the links on page you linked to (!): http://www.networkworld.com/article/2301697/smb/encouraging-closed-source-modules-part-1--copyright-and-software.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2301697/smb/encouraging-... > There is a bunch of explanations and legal opinions here. Did you read the text of that page or any of the linked articles? The OpenZFS position is clear: "However, there is nothing in either license that prevents distributing it in the form of a binary module or in the form of source code."
  - 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 3y ago
    I'd say the main problem with the whole Oracle/ZFS situation: even if merging it is legally sound beyond a doubt, Oracle has the resources (and probably willingness) to make the lives of everyone involved absolutely miserable in the meantime and create legal pains for years and years over this until it gets finally confirmed in court. I guess that alone could be enough to come to the conclusion that it is not worth the trouble.
    - boomboomsubban 3y ago
      The Oracle fears seems overblown to me. If ZFS is shipped with Linux, I believe it would be the GPL that is violated. So Oracle would have no right to sue beyond being one of the many Linux contributors. Linux had ~5 years to try and add ZFS before it was bought by Oracle, and did not do so. As much as Oracle is often the villain, I don't think they're what the Linux team fears here.
napkin 3y ago
I'd really like to understand your perspective! My current/primitive understanding: * CDDL is 'BSD-like'- allowing the right for CDDL code to co-exist in perhaps proprietary/closed source codebase, so long as the CDDL parts remain CDDL. It does not make demands for non-CDDL parts, allowing dual-license scenarios? * GPL demands all code in the same codebase are subject to GPL. e.g. This excludes a scenario where some parts are open source, and others proprietary/closed. * All contributions to the Linux kernel are subject to GPL * Say OpenZFS is merged into Linux, CDDL demands that OpenZFS parts remain CDDL? Now the resulting codebase has more restrictions than the spirit of the CDDL allows for. Is this not a conflict? If you could attempt to ELI5 how I'm potentially getting part of this wrong, or point me to some article, I'd appreciate it! I honestly find this stuff pretty confusing.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  IANAL, but my understanding of some of the details differs: > CDDL is 'BSD-like'- allowing the right for CDDL code to co-exist in perhaps proprietary/closed source codebase, so long as the CDDL parts remain CDDL. It does not make demands for non-CDDL parts, allowing dual-license scenarios? It's more like halfway between GPL and BSD. Importantly, BSD licenses impose sufficiently limited conditions that BSD code can be subject to GPL conditions at the same time without violating either license. CDDL makes mutually exclusive demands with GPL. (But yes, CDDL does allow for mixed CDDL+proprietary systems; that's what it was created for. Sun wanted to open source Solaris, but needed to be able to keep some parts of it closed-source (because they didn't actually own all the code, having licensed some of it from third parties).) > All contributions to the Linux kernel are subject to GPL There's actually non-GPL code in there, but it's all under GPL compatible licenses, so the final result is GPL. But for instance, if someone wanted to put in the work and there was interest, you could almost certainly get HAMMER2 from dragonfly BSD included into Linux because it'll be under a BSD license that's GPL compatible. > Now the resulting codebase has more restrictions than the spirit of the CDDL allows for. Is this not a conflict? Yes, that's basically the conflict. Note that there is some difference of opinion on the situation; Canonical, for instance, seems to believe that they can ship ZFS kernel modules under the CDDL without making them part of the GPL kernel and thus not mix the licenses. Others say that compiling the ZFS modules against the kernel makes the result a derivative work of the kernel and therefore is a conflict. Until someone actually tries to file a lawsuit over it, I don't know that we definitively know.

dralley 3y ago

I've read several such LKML threads about bcachefs and while the discussions have been contentious (and Kent could stand to chill out a bit), everyone has been in agreement that they'd like to see bcachefs succeed and be merged. The major technical blockers have been addressed or are being addressed. Bcachefs also has plenty of features which ZFS does not, so I don't see why you're so critical. Oracle could relicense ZFS at any time, or make an explicit statement about its legal status. They have not done so after 10 years.

gigatexal 3y ago
yeah i love love love ZFS and use it everywhere and am very excited to see Bcachefs get merged. More legit competition in this space is good. Btrfs doesn't apply, it's not even in the same league.
mustache_kimono 3y ago
>I've read several such LKML threads about bcachefs and while the discussions have been contentious (and Kent could stand to chill out a bit), everyone has been in agreement that they'd like to see bcachefs succeed and be merged. Bcachefs also has plenty of features which ZFS does not, so I don't see why you're so critical. Only because I've read this story more than a few times before? See: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22bcachefs%22%20merge&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... >Oracle could relicense ZFS at any time, or make an explicit statement about its legal status. They have not done so after 10 years. Any legal difficulty remains from the GPL side, and no suit has been brought in the years upon years of the GPL hair shirts screaming about non-compliance. Unfortunately, the GPL hair shirts don't have much (any) credibility on the subject of what the GPL means. Bring the suit or STFU. I have no patience for armchair legal opinions from people who won't put their money where their mouth is. Stop spreading legal FUD!
- dralley 3y ago
  Notably, Oracle does not include ZFS with Oracle Linux. As I said, they could easily clear this up, but they haven't.
  - mustache_kimono 3y ago
    I knew your pen name was familiar because I was liking your other comments in the recent RH threads. What's amusing is I previously thought RH was far too precious re: its interpretation of the GPL, especially re: ZFS. > Notably, Oracle does not include ZFS with Oracle Linux. As I said, they could easily clear this up, but they haven't. > Oracle could relicense ZFS at any time, or make an explicit statement about its legal status. They have not done so after 10 years. That would make this easy, but unfortunately easy is not the case we have here. Just as RH has chosen strict compliance with the GPL re RHEL, I think strict compliance with the GPLv2 is what is required here. Someone, I wish it was RH, should say "We've made a mistake. The GPL is not a suicide pact." For instance, interpreting any object which dynamically links to a GPL licensed work as a derived work is fundamentally anti-business, anti-interoperability, and, I'd argue, anti-FOSS. Being GPL compliant does not mean blithely accepting whatever legal claptrap FSF and SFC can summon.
- m45t3r 3y ago
  > Only because I've read this story more than a few times before? See: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22bcachefs%22%20merge&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Sorry, if we are looking at the same thing, the earliest time of a HN entry of bcachefs trying to be merged upstream was not even 1 month ago. All the other entries are related to features that are called "merge" and not actual merge requests or the author declaring that the code was up to be merged but not an actual merge request. 1 month ago is nothing in terms of kernel time, so I don't think your argument holds up.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    There was a previous attempt 4 years ago. It's normal that there's some pushback and things get worked on for some more time. Nothing that indicates a serious problem here. Kent worked on the filesystem overall rather than addressing the comments and resubmitting immediately. (But that's still a single initial attempt, not "a few" like the OP claimed)
mastax 3y ago
Oracle could relicense its own ZFS (probably?) But it couldn't relicense the ZFS everyone actually uses because they don't own the copyrights of independent contributors, some of whom oppose license changes.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

kaliszad 3y ago

I would like for OpenZFS to get merged into Linux but to be more realistic, even DTrace didn't get merged and that is code that was actually relicensed to GPL (UPL for the user space): https://www.theregister.com/2018/02/19/oracle_open_sources_dtrace_changes_licence_to_gpl/ https://www.theregister.com/2018/02/19/oracle_open_sources_d... Frankly, it is more likely, distributions will add/ solidify infrastructure for making OpenZFS really hassle-free and well integrated and cloud/ VPS providers will have alternative images built with Root-on-ZFS. Until then, it is not that hard to convert a VM from EXT4 to OpenZFS or to build your own image. Shameless plug, I have done a video about a procedure how to convert EXT4 to OpenZFS from within the VM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoRVFRufZI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoRVFRufZI0 Or you can just open the notes and copy&paste from there: https://github.com/KaliszAd/ext4-to-zfs-conversion https://github.com/KaliszAd/ext4-to-zfs-conversion

intelVISA 3y ago
Thanks for the info, I know painfully little of modern filesystems: without opening too many worm cans ZFS > XFS as a general purpose ext4 replacement?
- kaliszad 3y ago
  It depends, but as a rule of thumb for more traditional servers and development workstations ZFS is a superior choice. You can probably look at https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#fmzfs https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#fmzfs to get a quick and straight forward introduction. For me, ZFS beats other approaches with snapshots/ rollbacks and send/ receive. It really hits you, when you develop something using a database or a lot of files. If you want to test something, just do a snapshot (even without shutting down the database) and just try it out. If you mess up, you can at the very least shut the DB down, rollback (which is instant) and start the DB again. It will be in the state before you messed up. You can also make a clone and spin up another instance and compare. With files, you can even diff snapshots, so as to extract e.g. a deleted file. Also this is a great mitigation against ransomware, if your network drives are backed by ZFS. Also in the case of a database, compression and the integrity guarantees help a lot. You can do some tuning because of it that might make your performance better/ more consistent - because backups can get a lot more efficient and you can cache more data in RAM when it is compressed or buy better SSDs when they don't need to be that large. Now you can probably do something similar with btrfs, e.g. Turris Omnia is using btrfs internally and it saved me once while I was doing some broader reconfiguration. Otherwise, I don't know about it - it is probably reliable enough. You can do LVM snapshots. There are many approaches to solve a particular problem. ZFS was just designed to do some of these things and has about 15 years of production use in some of the most serious settings. XFS or EXT4 is a decent choice for systems that you just don't want to think about. They are available by default, don't usually need any kind of tuning/ configuration. XFS is probably the better choice instead of EXT4, if you have a typical mdadm/ lvm RAID for e.g. surveillance camera recordings. For VMs that do some computation but the data is stored elsewhere, you can use the usually default EXT4 for the base filesystem. Converting such systems to ZFS might not be worth it. For the company database, filer, archive, backup ZFS should be something you evaluate as the first option. Just be sure you know a bit about how ZFS stores its data and how to configure the values for your use case. ZFS is more rigid in some places however extremely flexible in others be sure to understand where the rigid parts might be a problem to you.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago

If I had to choose between Linux and Oracle to determine which one is operating in bad faith, I most certainly would not be thinking that it was Linux.

mustache_kimono 3y ago
> If I had to choose between Linux and Oracle to determine which one is operating in bad faith, I most certainly would not be thinking that it was Linux. I just want to pause for a moment to explain how unhinged this reply is. First, never said Linux (or Oracle for that matter) was operating in bad faith. Second, my comment calls ZFS a "hair shirt" for the kernel. A "hair shirt" is an uncomfortable undergarment which religious people/GPL fanatics use to punish themselves.
- adql 3y ago
  ZFS people can just change license that was explicity written to be GPL hostile to something non-retarded
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    No, they literally cannot. The current OpenZFS codebase is the combination of the original Sun/Oracle-owned code and a massive number of new committers. Now, Oracle could relicense the original code, but they can't do anything about the later additions, because they don't own the copyright on those. The only maybe possible carve out is if the code is licensed with something like "CDDL 1.0 or later" then they could make a new version, but I'm not clear on whether that's an option or whether the code is licensed CDDL 1.0-only. IANAL, YMMV. (EDIT: Apparently the CDDL already has a version 1.0 and 1.1? So take exact versions with a grain of salt above.)
  - arp242 3y ago
    This is a myth that keeps coming up, in spite of being debunked time and time and time again. Solaris could not use the GPL because Sun didn't own the rights to all parts, so the GPL's copyleft wouldn't work and they needed a new license. When OpenSolaris was released it wasn't 100% free/open source (some parts were later rewritten under OpenSolaris, and illumos completed that and is 100% free/open source). In hindsight, an explicit "GPL compatibility clause" like the EUPL has would clearly been a wiser choice, but that wasn't clear in 2005, and it's too late for that now, unfortunately. On the other hand, you could also blame the GPL for not recognizing that other copyleft licenses exist; they also could have written a compatibility clause in GPL 3. "CDDL is incompatible with the GPL" could also be phrased as "GPL is incompatible with the CDDL".

lizknope 3y ago

OpenZFS is free and open source but that license has been determined to NOT be GPL compatible by some lawyers. If your lawyer says it is fine then go ahead and make your own distribution where you include it as a separate module. Oracle, the current owner of ZFS, is one of the most litigious companies in the tech world. There is a bunch of explanations and legal opinions here. https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/License.html https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/License.html

mustache_kimono 3y ago
> OpenZFS is free and open source but that license has been determined to NOT be GPL compatible by some lawyers. Oh? And let me tell you there is more than a boat load of lawyers who disagree. See the links on page you linked to (!): http://www.networkworld.com/article/2301697/smb/encouraging-closed-source-modules-part-1--copyright-and-software.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2301697/smb/encouraging-... > There is a bunch of explanations and legal opinions here. Did you read the text of that page or any of the linked articles? The OpenZFS position is clear: "However, there is nothing in either license that prevents distributing it in the form of a binary module or in the form of source code."
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 3y ago
  I'd say the main problem with the whole Oracle/ZFS situation: even if merging it is legally sound beyond a doubt, Oracle has the resources (and probably willingness) to make the lives of everyone involved absolutely miserable in the meantime and create legal pains for years and years over this until it gets finally confirmed in court. I guess that alone could be enough to come to the conclusion that it is not worth the trouble.
  - boomboomsubban 3y ago
    The Oracle fears seems overblown to me. If ZFS is shipped with Linux, I believe it would be the GPL that is violated. So Oracle would have no right to sue beyond being one of the many Linux contributors. Linux had ~5 years to try and add ZFS before it was bought by Oracle, and did not do so. As much as Oracle is often the villain, I don't think they're what the Linux team fears here.

napkin 3y ago

I'd really like to understand your perspective! My current/primitive understanding: * CDDL is 'BSD-like'- allowing the right for CDDL code to co-exist in perhaps proprietary/closed source codebase, so long as the CDDL parts remain CDDL. It does not make demands for non-CDDL parts, allowing dual-license scenarios? * GPL demands all code in the same codebase are subject to GPL. e.g. This excludes a scenario where some parts are open source, and others proprietary/closed. * All contributions to the Linux kernel are subject to GPL * Say OpenZFS is merged into Linux, CDDL demands that OpenZFS parts remain CDDL? Now the resulting codebase has more restrictions than the spirit of the CDDL allows for. Is this not a conflict? If you could attempt to ELI5 how I'm potentially getting part of this wrong, or point me to some article, I'd appreciate it! I honestly find this stuff pretty confusing.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
IANAL, but my understanding of some of the details differs: > CDDL is 'BSD-like'- allowing the right for CDDL code to co-exist in perhaps proprietary/closed source codebase, so long as the CDDL parts remain CDDL. It does not make demands for non-CDDL parts, allowing dual-license scenarios? It's more like halfway between GPL and BSD. Importantly, BSD licenses impose sufficiently limited conditions that BSD code can be subject to GPL conditions at the same time without violating either license. CDDL makes mutually exclusive demands with GPL. (But yes, CDDL does allow for mixed CDDL+proprietary systems; that's what it was created for. Sun wanted to open source Solaris, but needed to be able to keep some parts of it closed-source (because they didn't actually own all the code, having licensed some of it from third parties).) > All contributions to the Linux kernel are subject to GPL There's actually non-GPL code in there, but it's all under GPL compatible licenses, so the final result is GPL. But for instance, if someone wanted to put in the work and there was interest, you could almost certainly get HAMMER2 from dragonfly BSD included into Linux because it'll be under a BSD license that's GPL compatible. > Now the resulting codebase has more restrictions than the spirit of the CDDL allows for. Is this not a conflict? Yes, that's basically the conflict. Note that there is some difference of opinion on the situation; Canonical, for instance, seems to believe that they can ship ZFS kernel modules under the CDDL without making them part of the GPL kernel and thus not mix the licenses. Others say that compiling the ZFS modules against the kernel makes the result a derivative work of the kernel and therefore is a conflict. Until someone actually tries to file a lawsuit over it, I don't know that we definitively know.