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They absolutely can ship it. They choose not to. There is a big difference. It's what happens when ideology is allowed to trump technology, and it is sad. The

They absolutely can ship it. They choose not to. There is a big difference. It's what happens when ideology is allowed to trump technology, and it is sad. The fact that various distros ship not-open video card drivers shows that for some things, there's a willingness to compromise. This is far "worse" than shipping an open source module, or open source code that is compiled into a module on install, either of which could be done for ZFS.

lucian1900 13y ago
The non-free drivers are allowed to be redistributed by the copyright holders. The reason to not distribute them would be ideological. Linux and ZFS's licenses are incompatible, which would make it illegal to distribute them together. Both ZFS and Linux copyright owners could choose to sue any entity that would distribute Linux with ZFS support.
- insaneirish 13y ago
  You take quite a logical leap from "licenses are incompatible" to "illegal to distribute them together." I'd love to know what led you to that conclusion. As I said to the other poster, you're just spreading FUD.
  - bkor 13y ago
    If the licenses are incompatible, then you cannot ship them together. Calling that FUD is a bit rich! Try going through the process at Fedora. The legal team will stop you. Licenses allow you to distribute things despite copyright. Usually distributing software without a license is illegal, though there are exceptions in some countries for music and movies. You can obviously nitpick about that he uses "illegal". However, the discussion was about why ZFS is not distributed. That is what the answer was about, incompatible licenses making it (somewhat) impossible for distributions to carry it. Now various distributions do have e.g. "nonfree" repositories, but incompatible licenses are a big problem. Responding to such concerns with "just spreading FUD" seems to (hopefully) indicate you're not involved with any distribution.
    - insaneirish 13y ago
      It is FUD. Gentoo is choosing to ship the modules: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?79312-ZFS-On-Linux-Is-Now-Set-For-quot-Wide-Scale-Deployment-quot&p=322923#post322923 http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?79312-ZFS-On-Linux...
      - bkor 13y ago
        I mean a legal opinion on this matter. Pointing to a random distribution is not enough. They might be doing something that they shouldn't have. Try to be concrete, just "FUD FUD FUD" is not impressive as an answer.
  - merijnv 13y ago
    Dude, that's literally what "licenses are incompatible" means. The GPL gives you a license to distribute IF AND ONLY IF all the linked binaries have AT LEAST the same permissive rights as the GPL mandates. The CDDL gives rights SIMILAR to GPL, but in a way that is incompatible, i.e. which does not let you distribute CDDL code with all the permissions the GPL mandates. As such, you void the license to distribute the GPL code, as you're unable to comply with the GPL license (i.e. the bit that all linked binaries have at least the GPL enforced liberties). The GPL's license to distribute is dependent on you distributing binaries with the appropriate permissions and the CDDL won't let you.
    - insaneirish 13y ago
      If it was a legal issue, everyone would be scared of shipping not open graphics drivers as well. Richard Yao from Gentoo summarizes it quite well (http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?79312-ZFS-On-Linux-Is-Now-Set-For-quot-Wide-Scale-Deployment-quot&p=322923#post322923 http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?79312-ZFS-On-Linux...). I don't think lack of manpower has been the only thing preventing it. I think idealogical issues are the main factor.
      - lucian1900 13y ago
        There is no issue with non-free drivers, since they are explicitly licensed by the copyright owner to be redistributable by anyone and they explicitly installed/enabled by users, so Linux's license is also satisfied. ZFS could be shipped in a similar manner to drivers, by requiring explicit user action to enable (I believe this is what Gentoo are doing). However, it makes a lot less sense for a filesystem, since the switching costs are much higher than for a graphics driver.
        insaneirish 13y ago
        It makes exactly the same sense! The installer could require explicit user action to pick ZFS. And there you go, the root filesystem would be on ZFS.
eonil 13y ago
Your definition of can is different from most people are thinking. Usually people don't say can on illegal stuffs. If you really think you can do something illegal because just you're able to do that, oops…!
- insaneirish 13y ago
  Illegal? Huh? Please provide reasoning why you think it's "illegal." Otherwise, you're just spreading FUD, which is the whole reason for people believing a Linux distribution can't ship ZFS on Linux in the first place.
  - bkor 13y ago
    Please provide reasoning how it is ok to distribute it. CDDL is incompatible with GPL. Distributing that would allow your distribution to be sued for copyright violation. http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue makes some funny claims about "same binary". GPL is not about "same binary" at all.

lucian1900 13y ago

The non-free drivers are allowed to be redistributed by the copyright holders. The reason to not distribute them would be ideological. Linux and ZFS's licenses are incompatible, which would make it illegal to distribute them together. Both ZFS and Linux copyright owners could choose to sue any entity that would distribute Linux with ZFS support.

insaneirish 13y ago
You take quite a logical leap from "licenses are incompatible" to "illegal to distribute them together." I'd love to know what led you to that conclusion. As I said to the other poster, you're just spreading FUD.
- bkor 13y ago
  If the licenses are incompatible, then you cannot ship them together. Calling that FUD is a bit rich! Try going through the process at Fedora. The legal team will stop you. Licenses allow you to distribute things despite copyright. Usually distributing software without a license is illegal, though there are exceptions in some countries for music and movies. You can obviously nitpick about that he uses "illegal". However, the discussion was about why ZFS is not distributed. That is what the answer was about, incompatible licenses making it (somewhat) impossible for distributions to carry it. Now various distributions do have e.g. "nonfree" repositories, but incompatible licenses are a big problem. Responding to such concerns with "just spreading FUD" seems to (hopefully) indicate you're not involved with any distribution.
  - insaneirish 13y ago
    It is FUD. Gentoo is choosing to ship the modules: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?79312-ZFS-On-Linux-Is-Now-Set-For-quot-Wide-Scale-Deployment-quot&p=322923#post322923 http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?79312-ZFS-On-Linux...
    - bkor 13y ago
      I mean a legal opinion on this matter. Pointing to a random distribution is not enough. They might be doing something that they shouldn't have. Try to be concrete, just "FUD FUD FUD" is not impressive as an answer.
- merijnv 13y ago
  Dude, that's literally what "licenses are incompatible" means. The GPL gives you a license to distribute IF AND ONLY IF all the linked binaries have AT LEAST the same permissive rights as the GPL mandates. The CDDL gives rights SIMILAR to GPL, but in a way that is incompatible, i.e. which does not let you distribute CDDL code with all the permissions the GPL mandates. As such, you void the license to distribute the GPL code, as you're unable to comply with the GPL license (i.e. the bit that all linked binaries have at least the GPL enforced liberties). The GPL's license to distribute is dependent on you distributing binaries with the appropriate permissions and the CDDL won't let you.
  - insaneirish 13y ago
    If it was a legal issue, everyone would be scared of shipping not open graphics drivers as well. Richard Yao from Gentoo summarizes it quite well (http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?79312-ZFS-On-Linux-Is-Now-Set-For-quot-Wide-Scale-Deployment-quot&p=322923#post322923 http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?79312-ZFS-On-Linux...). I don't think lack of manpower has been the only thing preventing it. I think idealogical issues are the main factor.
    - lucian1900 13y ago
      There is no issue with non-free drivers, since they are explicitly licensed by the copyright owner to be redistributable by anyone and they explicitly installed/enabled by users, so Linux's license is also satisfied. ZFS could be shipped in a similar manner to drivers, by requiring explicit user action to enable (I believe this is what Gentoo are doing). However, it makes a lot less sense for a filesystem, since the switching costs are much higher than for a graphics driver.
      - insaneirish 13y ago
        It makes exactly the same sense! The installer could require explicit user action to pick ZFS. And there you go, the root filesystem would be on ZFS.

eonil 13y ago

Your definition of can is different from most people are thinking. Usually people don't say can on illegal stuffs. If you really think you can do something illegal because just you're able to do that, oops…!

insaneirish 13y ago
Illegal? Huh? Please provide reasoning why you think it's "illegal." Otherwise, you're just spreading FUD, which is the whole reason for people believing a Linux distribution can't ship ZFS on Linux in the first place.
- bkor 13y ago
  Please provide reasoning how it is ok to distribute it. CDDL is incompatible with GPL. Distributing that would allow your distribution to be sued for copyright violation. http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue makes some funny claims about "same binary". GPL is not about "same binary" at all.