Hacker News Reader

Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

If we could ignore the CDDL conditions, then the problems would go away. A license incompatibility happens when two licenses has each some conditions which are incompatible with each other, and the authors of software under those licenses do not give additional permissions.

The problem would go away if you convinced oracle to change the license or give explicit permission to link ZFS with the linux kernel under the GPL conditions.

Or:

Convinced the linux kernel team to change their license or give explicit permission to link the linux kernel with ZFS under the CDDL conditions.

Or you can blame "GPL", because it obviously was created after CDDL...

View on HN

> Or you can blame "GPL", because it obviously was created after CDDL...

It's the other way around.

Sarcasm was implied.

Wait, there is sarcasm on the internet? What's the markdown for that?

> "What's the markdown for that?"

The sarcasm was that the great-great-grandparent didn't use it.

It's not a requirement, you don't have to use it every time you employ sarcasm online, it just helps if it's likely to be misunderstood.

> If we could ignore the CDDL conditions, then the problems would go away.

That's a strange way to say relicensing CDDL code under GPL

> A license incompatibility happens when two licenses has each some conditions which are incompatible with each other,

I think it's a bit of a far stretch to say that both licenses are to blame when one license has a so far reaching condition that other code needs to be relicensable under that license.

Any Covered Software that You distribute or otherwise make available in Executable form must also be made available in Source Code form and that Source Code form must be distributed only under the terms of this License. The Modifications that You create or to which You contribute are governed by the terms of this License.

Which license require that other code needs to be relicensable under its license? this license really means, this license. Modified code is required to be under, and I will repeat myself here, this license. If source code is not under this license, then it is infringing on this license condition and this license will no longer permit redistribution.

This license has a condition, and this license condition makes it incompatible with every other license that has an identical condition.

Oracle has nothing whatsoever to do with this code: this is OpenZFS, out of the illumos' source tree.

If there's money to be made, Oracle will make defending ZFS their business, regardless of the source of the implementation. Look at what's happening over Java with the Oracle vs. Google court cases:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/round-2-of-oracle...

https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2732

Did you not read what I said? It doesn't matter whether it's a fork or not. If Oracle wins the current lawsuit over Java, it's arguable they could go after OpenZFS too as the lawsuit is based on whether the design of software (not the implementation, the design) can be owned by a company.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Goog....

"The appeals court reversed the district court on the central issue, holding that the "structure, sequence and organization" of an API was copyrightable."

Java and illumos are licensed under two completely different licenses, and neither illumos code base, nor OpenZFS are an application programming interface.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com