ZFS.

[Bojan Smojver]

On Fri, 2005-11-18 at 13:08 +0100, Stefan Held wrote:

> AFAIK the CDDL is a BSD Style License. So where exactly do you come to
> the conclusion that Software written under this license can't be used in
> a GPL'ed environment?

Not only is it not compatible (as others pointed out quite eloquently),
but is not compatible on purpose, IMNSHO.

Sun absolutely need to distribute OpenSolaris code under CDDL, in order
to prevent exactly what was asked here - an outflow of technology from
Solaris to Linux (and that's where those patents licensed to CDDL code
only come in even more handy). That's why they picked that licence and
not the GPL in the first place. People that contribute to OpenSolaris
are always going to be at Sun's mercy to keep releasing the closed
binaries (remember, half of "Open"Solaris is closed binaries). If Sun
goes bust tomorrow, who's going to give those people an up-to-date copy
of the binaries? Exactly!

Furthermore, Sun are in the unique position here, not only because they
control those binaries, but because they can ship a binary only Solaris
distro with bits that others don't have access to at all (though their
long standing relationships with various proprietary software vendors).
So, people that are working on OpenSolaris effectively become free of
charge Sun employees. Really nice touch. IMNSHO, that part was also
designed on purpose, because Sun realised that they cannot maintain
Solaris as a proprietary Unix forever (it was evident for a while that
Linux gets new stuff way faster), so they went on to recruit open source
community to work for them for free. Thanks, but no thanks.

Contrast this with true open source companies like Red Hat (note: I am
not a RH employee). If Red Hat went bust today, anyone could take all
Red Hat code (including Fedora, RHEL, GFS etc.) and continue at exactly
the same point where Red Hat left off (in fact, people like CentOS are
doing exactly that already). It is simply not possible to do that with
"Open"Solaris, because Sun controls vital binary bits and reserves the
right to release "slightly different" binaries in their proprietary
version, thus shifting the balance of power from the community to
themselves.

So, unless Sun change their mind, I don't think we'll see ZFS in Linux
at all. They may as well do that if the OpenSolaris thing doesn't pan
out the way they expected. Only future will tell.

PS. I know that I will now forever be labelled as a "nut-case" by Sun
lovers, but I like to call is as see it.

-- 
Bojan