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Has the whole license incompatibility thing actually been tested/litigated in court? I heard Canonical has (at least at some point) shipped prebuilt ZFS. I unde

Has the whole license incompatibility thing actually been tested/litigated in court? I heard Canonical has (at least at some point) shipped prebuilt ZFS. I understand that in-tree inclusion brings its own set of problems, but I’m just asking about redistribution of binaries - the same binaries you are allowed to build locally. It would be nice to have a precedent deciding on this bullshit argument once and for all so distros can freely ship prebuilt binary modules and bring Linux to the modern times when it comes to filesystems. The whole situation is ridiculous. I'd understand if this was about money, but who exactly gets hurt by users getting a prebuilt module from somewhere, vs building exactly the same thing locally from freely-available source?

askiiart 3y ago
I can confirm that Ubuntu ships prebuilt ZFS, I used a live Ubuntu USB to copy some data off a ZFS pool just a couple weeks ago.
chungy 3y ago
The only entity to start a litigation cycle is Oracle, and they've either been uninterested or know they can't win. Canonical is the only entity they have any chance of going after; Canonical's lawyers already decided there was no license conflict. Linus Torvalds doesn't feel like being the guinea pig by risking ZFS in the mainline kernel. A totally reasonable position while the CDDL+GPL resolution is still ultimately unknown. (And honestly, with OpenZFS supporting a very wide range of Linux versions and FreeBSD at the same time, I have the feeling that mainline inclusion in Linux might not be the best outcome anyway.)
- bubblethink 3y ago
  Not to mention, bcachefs is making progress towards mainline.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  I wonder what Oracle would litigate over though? My understanding is that licenses are generally used by copyright holders to restrict what others can do with a work so the holder can profit off the work and/or keep a competitive advantage. Here I do not see this argument applying since the source is freely available to use and extend; the license explicitly allows someone to compile it and use it. In this case providing prebuilt binaries is more akin to providing a "cache" for something you can (and are allowed to) build locally (using ZFS-DKMS for example) using source you are once again allowed to acquire and use. What prejudice does it cause to Oracle that the “make” command is ran on Ubuntu’s build servers as opposed to users’ individual machines? Have similar cases been litigated before where the argument was about who runs the make command, with source that either party has otherwise a right to download & use?
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Copying and distributing those binaries is covered by copyright. You have to follow the license if you want to do it. It doesn't matter that end users could legally get the same files in some other manner. Distribution itself is part of the legal framework.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Playing legal chicken with Oracle is a really dumb thing to do because catching their customers in obscure license violations and then suing the hell out of them is their entire business model. They specialise in this stuff.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Because it will be hella fun backing ZFS out of the kernel source once it's been there for a few years.
rincebrain 3y ago
I don't think Linux would like to ship a mass of code that size that's not GPLed, even if court cases say CDDL is GPL-compatible.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  It isn’t compatible because it adds additional restrictions regarding patented code. The CDDL was made to be used in mixed license distributions and only affects individual files, but the GPL taints anything linked (which is why LGPL exists). Since the terms of the CDDL can’t be respected in a GPL’d distribution, I can’t see a way for it to ever be included in the kernel repo. I don’t think there’s any issue with canonical shipping a kmod, but similar to 3ᴿᴰ party binary drivers, it would need to be treated as a different “work”.
  - rincebrain 3y ago
    I'm aware of the surrounding arguments, I promise; my remark was that I doubted Linux would like to ship a large mass of code with any additional encumberments even if it didn't somehow fail the GPL compatible test. (I'm aware that this is an impossible condition barring court precedent that ignores the definition of the constraint.)
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    It's a little unfair to blame it on GPL. If ZFS was MIT/BSD/etc licensed, it could be brought into the Linux repository just fine. CDDL explicitly doesn't let that happen, by saying "Source Code form must be distributed only under the terms of this License". That only is harsh.
    - slikrick 3y ago
      if the kernel was MIT/BSD/etc licensed ZFS would be allowed in the kernel just fine too. but only one of the licenses is infectious and requires things of the other sources. it's definitely a GPL issue more than a CDDL issue

askiiart 3y ago

I can confirm that Ubuntu ships prebuilt ZFS, I used a live Ubuntu USB to copy some data off a ZFS pool just a couple weeks ago.

chungy 3y ago

The only entity to start a litigation cycle is Oracle, and they've either been uninterested or know they can't win. Canonical is the only entity they have any chance of going after; Canonical's lawyers already decided there was no license conflict. Linus Torvalds doesn't feel like being the guinea pig by risking ZFS in the mainline kernel. A totally reasonable position while the CDDL+GPL resolution is still ultimately unknown. (And honestly, with OpenZFS supporting a very wide range of Linux versions and FreeBSD at the same time, I have the feeling that mainline inclusion in Linux might not be the best outcome anyway.)

bubblethink 3y ago
Not to mention, bcachefs is making progress towards mainline.
Nextgrid 3y ago
I wonder what Oracle would litigate over though? My understanding is that licenses are generally used by copyright holders to restrict what others can do with a work so the holder can profit off the work and/or keep a competitive advantage. Here I do not see this argument applying since the source is freely available to use and extend; the license explicitly allows someone to compile it and use it. In this case providing prebuilt binaries is more akin to providing a "cache" for something you can (and are allowed to) build locally (using ZFS-DKMS for example) using source you are once again allowed to acquire and use. What prejudice does it cause to Oracle that the “make” command is ran on Ubuntu’s build servers as opposed to users’ individual machines? Have similar cases been litigated before where the argument was about who runs the make command, with source that either party has otherwise a right to download & use?
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Copying and distributing those binaries is covered by copyright. You have to follow the license if you want to do it. It doesn't matter that end users could legally get the same files in some other manner. Distribution itself is part of the legal framework.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Playing legal chicken with Oracle is a really dumb thing to do because catching their customers in obscure license violations and then suing the hell out of them is their entire business model. They specialise in this stuff.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

Because it will be hella fun backing ZFS out of the kernel source once it's been there for a few years.

rincebrain 3y ago

I don't think Linux would like to ship a mass of code that size that's not GPLed, even if court cases say CDDL is GPL-compatible.

jonhohle 3y ago
It isn’t compatible because it adds additional restrictions regarding patented code. The CDDL was made to be used in mixed license distributions and only affects individual files, but the GPL taints anything linked (which is why LGPL exists). Since the terms of the CDDL can’t be respected in a GPL’d distribution, I can’t see a way for it to ever be included in the kernel repo. I don’t think there’s any issue with canonical shipping a kmod, but similar to 3ᴿᴰ party binary drivers, it would need to be treated as a different “work”.
- rincebrain 3y ago
  I'm aware of the surrounding arguments, I promise; my remark was that I doubted Linux would like to ship a large mass of code with any additional encumberments even if it didn't somehow fail the GPL compatible test. (I'm aware that this is an impossible condition barring court precedent that ignores the definition of the constraint.)
- yencabulator 3y ago
  It's a little unfair to blame it on GPL. If ZFS was MIT/BSD/etc licensed, it could be brought into the Linux repository just fine. CDDL explicitly doesn't let that happen, by saying "Source Code form must be distributed only under the terms of this License". That only is harsh.
  - slikrick 3y ago
    if the kernel was MIT/BSD/etc licensed ZFS would be allowed in the kernel just fine too. but only one of the licenses is infectious and requires things of the other sources. it's definitely a GPL issue more than a CDDL issue