3 ms·

Playing devil's advocate here, but what if Oracle decides to sue you, a company with only a few thousands in revenue, for their multi-million dollar licensing f

by arjvik 3y ago

Playing devil's advocate here, but what if Oracle decides to sue you, a company with only a few thousands in revenue, for their multi-million dollar licensing fee? I agree this is unlikely, but so is someone being born with as much litigiousness as Larry Ellison.

TheDong 3y ago
This is built on a misunderstanding of what the ZFS licensing issue is. ZFS is licensed under the CDDL [0], which is a copyleft license that grants you full rights to use the ZFS source code for basically anything, providing that any derivative works incorporating its source code are also are under the CDDL. There is no "licensing fee" that you can pay Oracle related to this. Linux is licensed under the GPL, which just like the CDDL, is a copyleft license which requires derivative works to be distributed under the GPL. The conflict here is that both require the entire derived work to be distributed under CDDL/GPL, but obviously only one license can be picked.... even though realistically, GPL and CDDL are quite similar licenses. The additional fact that is useful to know is that zfs.ko, the zfs kernel module, is distributed under the CDDL by ubuntu, and any other distro distributing it that I know of. So, with that knowledge, who can sue who and why? 1. The people that can be sued are people distributing compiled zfs binaries (the 'zfs.ko' kernel binary). In practice, this means canonical, and anyone else who distributes disk images using ZFS (such as snapshotted EC2 AMIs) 2. The people who can sue are the holders of the Linux GPL license, and they can do so by claiming zfs.ko violates their copyright by being a derived work of the linux kernel, but being distributed under the CDDL rather than the GPL. So, first of all, the vast majority of companies using ZFS aren't also distributing binary distributions containing zfs.ko and the linux kernel together, therefore this whole thing is moot. Realistically, most companies using ZFS only have the risk of _canonical_ being sued, and that breaking their filesystem, not them running into legal issues themselves. And second, it would require a holder of Linux copyright to file suit, and realistically, no court could find significant damages here. Canonical also has lawyers that claim 2 wouldn't legally follow, that 'zfs.ko' is not in fact a derived work of the linux kernel. There's differing opinions there, but pretty much everyone agrees that the people who could sue if this interpretation is wrong is the holders of Linux copyright, not oracle. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distribution_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distrib...
- arjvik 3y ago
  I see, thanks for educating me on this with such an in-depth reply! I simply saw "licensing issue" and "Oracle" together and assumed the standard Oracle licensing worry applied.
- jclulow 3y ago
  Note that unlike the GPL, the CDDL is file-based. It doesn't require your entire body of software to be CDDL, it just requires that you make modifications to CDDL-licenced files available under the CDDL.
- jakobson14 3y ago
  You have one crucial fact wrong: The CDDL is actually a weak per-file copyleft. The CDDL is totally ok with the rest of the linux kernel staying GPLv2. The GPL is allergic to any non-GPL (eg. ZFS) code being distributed with the kernel source.
  - TheDong 3y ago
    Sure, but I don't think that's crucial here. Does it change any of the other information? I admit I shouldn't have written "both require the entire derived work to be distributed under CDDL/GPL", and instead should have written "both may require, depending on a court's interpretation, the zfs kernel module to be distributed under CDDL or GPL respectively". I think the rest of the comment stands though, right?
    - jakobson14 3y ago
      > "both may require, depending on a court's interpretation, the zfs kernel module to be distributed under CDDL or GPL respectively". That's wrong, and misses fundamental information about the CDDL. First, the CDDL gives absolutely no fucks how you licence a resulting binary. It only cares about the specific covered source files, and doesn't care what you bundle them with. So nobody would ever argue that the module should be licenced as CDDL. On the flip side, you'd have a really hard time arguing that the module should be licensed as GPL.* Sure, there's maybe a GPL wrapper, but lots of modules are non-GPL even when they might feature such a wrapper. ie. nvidia. You also can't argue ZFS is a derived work of the kernel, which is really the crux of the issue. ZFS was first written on solaris, developed for several years on freeBSD, and remains neutral across 3-5 different supported OSs. There's nothing to indicate the GPL should have more claim over ZFS than the wrapper. The one and only place you'll ever run into trouble is if you start trying to distribute ZFS *source code* in the kernel source tree, as a fully integrated part of the kernel. (EDIT: or compiled together in a single kernel binary, from said combined source) The CDDL doesn't care about the mixing but the GPL does. Literally everyone agrees this is a bad idea and nobody does it. *Let's ignore for a moment for the moment that you *couldn't* since the GPL requires complete corresponding source code and you can't relicence the CDDL source code files.
kaba0 3y ago
On what grounds? ZFS has an open-source license. The only semi-open question related to the topic is packaging it together with another, different open-source license that is viral and mandates more things (GPL). That part is not being “violated” by an enduser, but the distro maintainer.
- jakobson14 3y ago
  Oracle's hands are tied in so far as they can't revoke the CDDL licence that Sun provided. They could sue you as a kernel contributor, but only if you do something to violate the GPL. The only thing that would clearly violate the GPL, in the era of proprietary nvidia blobs, is if you tried to ship the ZFS source code in-tree. Everybody agrees that's a bad idea, nobody does it. ZFS instead is shipped as a separate kernel module.

by arjvik 3y ago

TheDong 3y ago

This is built on a misunderstanding of what the ZFS licensing issue is. ZFS is licensed under the CDDL [0], which is a copyleft license that grants you full rights to use the ZFS source code for basically anything, providing that any derivative works incorporating its source code are also are under the CDDL. There is no "licensing fee" that you can pay Oracle related to this. Linux is licensed under the GPL, which just like the CDDL, is a copyleft license which requires derivative works to be distributed under the GPL. The conflict here is that both require the entire derived work to be distributed under CDDL/GPL, but obviously only one license can be picked.... even though realistically, GPL and CDDL are quite similar licenses. The additional fact that is useful to know is that zfs.ko, the zfs kernel module, is distributed under the CDDL by ubuntu, and any other distro distributing it that I know of. So, with that knowledge, who can sue who and why? 1. The people that can be sued are people distributing compiled zfs binaries (the 'zfs.ko' kernel binary). In practice, this means canonical, and anyone else who distributes disk images using ZFS (such as snapshotted EC2 AMIs) 2. The people who can sue are the holders of the Linux GPL license, and they can do so by claiming zfs.ko violates their copyright by being a derived work of the linux kernel, but being distributed under the CDDL rather than the GPL. So, first of all, the vast majority of companies using ZFS aren't also distributing binary distributions containing zfs.ko and the linux kernel together, therefore this whole thing is moot. Realistically, most companies using ZFS only have the risk of _canonical_ being sued, and that breaking their filesystem, not them running into legal issues themselves. And second, it would require a holder of Linux copyright to file suit, and realistically, no court could find significant damages here. Canonical also has lawyers that claim 2 wouldn't legally follow, that 'zfs.ko' is not in fact a derived work of the linux kernel. There's differing opinions there, but pretty much everyone agrees that the people who could sue if this interpretation is wrong is the holders of Linux copyright, not oracle. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distribution_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distrib...

arjvik 3y ago
I see, thanks for educating me on this with such an in-depth reply! I simply saw "licensing issue" and "Oracle" together and assumed the standard Oracle licensing worry applied.
jclulow 3y ago
Note that unlike the GPL, the CDDL is file-based. It doesn't require your entire body of software to be CDDL, it just requires that you make modifications to CDDL-licenced files available under the CDDL.
jakobson14 3y ago
You have one crucial fact wrong: The CDDL is actually a weak per-file copyleft. The CDDL is totally ok with the rest of the linux kernel staying GPLv2. The GPL is allergic to any non-GPL (eg. ZFS) code being distributed with the kernel source.
- TheDong 3y ago
  Sure, but I don't think that's crucial here. Does it change any of the other information? I admit I shouldn't have written "both require the entire derived work to be distributed under CDDL/GPL", and instead should have written "both may require, depending on a court's interpretation, the zfs kernel module to be distributed under CDDL or GPL respectively". I think the rest of the comment stands though, right?
  - jakobson14 3y ago
    > "both may require, depending on a court's interpretation, the zfs kernel module to be distributed under CDDL or GPL respectively". That's wrong, and misses fundamental information about the CDDL. First, the CDDL gives absolutely no fucks how you licence a resulting binary. It only cares about the specific covered source files, and doesn't care what you bundle them with. So nobody would ever argue that the module should be licenced as CDDL. On the flip side, you'd have a really hard time arguing that the module should be licensed as GPL.* Sure, there's maybe a GPL wrapper, but lots of modules are non-GPL even when they might feature such a wrapper. ie. nvidia. You also can't argue ZFS is a derived work of the kernel, which is really the crux of the issue. ZFS was first written on solaris, developed for several years on freeBSD, and remains neutral across 3-5 different supported OSs. There's nothing to indicate the GPL should have more claim over ZFS than the wrapper. The one and only place you'll ever run into trouble is if you start trying to distribute ZFS *source code* in the kernel source tree, as a fully integrated part of the kernel. (EDIT: or compiled together in a single kernel binary, from said combined source) The CDDL doesn't care about the mixing but the GPL does. Literally everyone agrees this is a bad idea and nobody does it. *Let's ignore for a moment for the moment that you *couldn't* since the GPL requires complete corresponding source code and you can't relicence the CDDL source code files.

kaba0 3y ago

On what grounds? ZFS has an open-source license. The only semi-open question related to the topic is packaging it together with another, different open-source license that is viral and mandates more things (GPL). That part is not being “violated” by an enduser, but the distro maintainer.

jakobson14 3y ago
Oracle's hands are tied in so far as they can't revoke the CDDL licence that Sun provided. They could sue you as a kernel contributor, but only if you do something to violate the GPL. The only thing that would clearly violate the GPL, in the era of proprietary nvidia blobs, is if you tried to ship the ZFS source code in-tree. Everybody agrees that's a bad idea, nobody does it. ZFS instead is shipped as a separate kernel module.