Comment by jsiepkes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsiepkes | Hacker News Reader

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> ZFS has first-class support on Ubuntu and is compiled into the kernel.

And Ubuntu is also the only distribution which has ZFS. Using ZFS on any other distribution (for example RHEL, Rocky Linux, etc.) is a pain. Every update is Russian roulette in which it can break.

And everyone except Ubutunu thinks it's a violation of the CDDL. Keep in mind that Oracle is the copyright holder of ZFS. So you (and Ubuntu) are violating Oracle's license terms. Would be realy interesting to see what happens if Oracle decides to sue an Ubuntu user. Would Ubuntu step in to help?

> There's also real DTrace on Oracle Linux if you're ready to sell your soul:

I can't run Ubuntu (for ZFS) and Oracle Linux (for DTrace) at the same time. Besides, like you said; Why would anyone want to use Oracle's Unbreakable Linux?

> Well... linux has containers, and if all you need is isolation...

No that's not all I need. I need things like virtual networking between my containers.

> I actually think it's worse in this regard because of the link above.

Depends. If you put them in a FreeBSD jail they are probably better isolated then only using systemd.

It's not "only Ubuntu". I'm using ZFS (not for boot or root partition) on Gentoo for some time. It's a separate package from kernel, and has to rebuild after a kernel upgrade but it works as expected.

To add another anecdote: I use ZFS on NixOS for all of my partitions, including an encrypted boot partition. It has been rock solid for me.

Not only rock solid but also very easy!

> Keep in mind that Oracle is the copyright holder of ZFS. So you (and Ubuntu) are violating Oracle's license terms.

If anything IS a problem here it is violating the terms of the GPL, not the CDDL.

So no, no one is violating Oracles licensing terms - and if they were, they’d have been sued in 2016 when this shipped. Do you really think ORACLE of all people is just holding back out the goodness of their hearts?

Complete FUD.

> If anything IS a problem here it is violating the terms of the GPL, not the CDDL.

How so? Aren't the GPL and CDDL both copyleft?

> So no, no one is violating Oracles licensing terms - and if they were, they’d have been sued in 2016 when this shipped. Do you really think ORACLE of all people is just holding back out the goodness of their hearts?

No, Oracle is holding back because they want more money. If they sue a little guy now, then everyone else will immediately stop using ZFS-on-Linux. They're waiting until someone with really deep pockets starts to use it before they sue.

>How so? Aren't the GPL and CDDL both copyleft?

They are, but GPL is (tl;dr) incompatible with anything that's not a subset of GPL. That's because GPL is viral, and CDDL isn't. And that's why in the Open Source world you can't get license incompatibility without throwing GPL in the mix.

So, yeah, it's GPL that's possibly being violated; CDDL is fine with whatever license there is. Oracle could sue you if they relicensed ZFS under GPL, but can't with CDDL because of implicit protection CDDL contains.

Isn't the whole reason that the CDDL is a problem that it is viral too? Otherwise you could just distribute the whole bundle of ZFS+Linux as GPL and be fine.

It's not, CDDL explicitly states it doesn't apply to non-CDDL-ed source files. The problem is, GPL is claimed to be the other way around, so this would mean applying GPL to CDDL sources, and you can't do that, because CDDL gives you additional protections ("freedoms") GPL doesn't, and that's GPL-incompatible.

If I combined ZFS and the Linux kernel and licensed the result under the CDDL, I'd be violating the GPL. If I instead licensed the result under the GPL, then I'd be violating the CDDL. I'm not seeing how the licenses' differences actually cause an asymmetry here.

You can't "license the result", it's not your decision to make. GPL parts are GPL, CDDL parts are CDDL, BSD parts are BSD and so on. There's no problem with mixing code under different licences. That is, until GPL enters the picture - because GPL is viral, so it (at least according to FSF) claims the non-GPL parts too. It's not a problem for, say, BSD, because it's a subset of GPL[1], but it can be a problem with licenses that guarantee you more freedoms than GPL, like CDDL, Mozilla license, Apache, or even GPLv3.

1. And it used to be a problem with the old BSD, with the advertising clause, precisely because it wasn't a subset.

> If anything IS a problem here it is violating the terms of the GPL, not the CDDL.

The CDDL terms are violated because you can't re-license code that is under the CDDL (in contrast to for example the BSD licenses). The GPLv2 is a strong copy-left license that puts the CDDL files under GPLv2.

Even the creators of the CDDL themselves have stated that the CDDL is probably incompatible with the GPL [1].

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/114840/

You cannot relicense BSD code. In general, you cannot change anything about the copyright or license for any work that you do not own the copyright to.

Perhaps you mean the BSD licensed artifacts are "compatible" with copyleft licenses?

Relicense might not the best word but compatible also doesn't cover it in this context.

Saying you can "assimilate" BSD licensed code in to a GPL project might be more appropriate. Since rights such as "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms" which the BSD gives you no longer apply after the code is in a GPL project [1].

You can't do this with CDDL licensed source code.

[1] https://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2007/gpl-non-gpl-colla...

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