I don't follow it much these days, but nothing really surprises me from Canonical anymore. They leech off free software just like any other corporation.
Unless I'm remembering it wrong, I'm honestly not surprised that they might just be less worried about licensing in general after that; maybe this is the software licensing equivalent of "too big to fail"?
Or they correctly interpreted the law?
Few of us care to admit how this "legal consensus" is mostly BS. Lots of evidence to the contrary, but, like politics these days, it sure is an appealing fantasy?
If the common consensus was BS, I actually don't think that detracts from the larger point I was trying to make much; I probably distracted from it too much with my over-enthusiastic wordplay at the end, but my original intent was to convey that Canonical might just intentionally have decided that they aren't concerned with the types of licensing issues that people are discussing here with regards to coreutils. If my theory is correct, it's due to sound legal judgment or intentional non-compliance isn't something I have any strong insight into; I mostly just thought it was worth suggesting that what people here think about it might not really matter all that much because it seems unlikely to me that they'll either be convinced to change their plans or suffer significant negative consequences from going forward with what they've decided, regardless of whether it's right or wrong.
I think your recollection here is pretty colored, or else you were only reading stuff from one particular bubble. My own recollection is that there were very compelling arguments to the contrary, ones that I agreed with. Like, foundational to the concept of civil court cases is "standing" which is almost invariably down to a party suffering damages. Courts aren't a venue (at least in the US in general) for solving debates of abstract philosophy, that's what civil society is about, they're for applying the state's general monopoly on violence in order to rectify harms. Party A claims they were damaged by Party B (statutory, actual or both) in a way that violates the law. The remedy if they win is generally that they are made whole via money as best as possible or, rarely, via actual performance by Party B.
But if open source license GPL code is distributed with open source license CDDL code, with full access the source of both available, who is losing money on that? Who is getting damaged? What rights are being lost? Who has standing to sue over it? The idea that it's banned at all isn't tested legally anyway afaik, but more fundamentally if there is no harm then there simply isn't any court case. Say you saghm decided tomorrow that you were really steamed about ZFS being included with Ubuntu and decided to get going on your lawsuit on Monday, when the court asks "how much money did that cost you and what do you want us to do about it" what would your answer be, even putting aside "what's your theory of law on this one".
>and from what I can tell, they basically got away with it?
Well, that would be expected if there just isn't any case there right?
(I don't approve of this system, I am merely describing what I see as the status quo.)
As has been said, being a FOSS "advocate" may put you on many sides of any copyright issue.
> RIAA isn't going to waste time finding out if the recipients were planning to buy CDs otherwise. If you receive software under a license that is too restrictive for you, then there is always the option to pay the rightholder to grant you a more permissive license in exchange for money.
Your comparison fails to understand how different these claims are. First, those CDs have a price on the tin. That is -- this claim would have "actual damages" which can be readily determined. Second, you're speculating a new license for either Linux or OpenZFS is possible, but I don't think anyone imagines either is readily available given the number of rights holders. If Oracle was offering to relicense (BTW only its portion of the ZFS source) for a known and reasonable amount $X, like your CDs, then your comparison might make more sense (but read on, the offer of another license does not preclude a finding of non-infringement).
Thankfully, of course, copyright law provides for statutory damages where actual damages cannot readily be proven, as here. But those nominal/statutory damages divided up among Linux rights holders would be almost insignificant, and therefore this poster above is likely correct -- this may not be a legally cognizable injury.
While I may agree re: this poster's damages analysis, I'm not even sure that's the best form of the ZFS argument. IMHO where anyone creates a functional software interface, whether it be via game console's cart or a kernel module, fair use allows one to create to software and use that interface. Period. Your license can say whatever it wants. Your license can say "all your software now belongs to use" and IMHO it is completely unenforceable. IMHO the courts have favored software interoperability and fair use for years.
For example:
In Sega Enterprises, Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., the court denied copyright protection for “functional requirements for compatibility with the Genesis console . . . .” Under this approach, the right of the kernel module author to create a compatible module overrides any nominal copyright infringement created when that author creates static or dynamic links to kernel code. Sega’s Genesis console had no public API whatsoever, stable or otherwise, yet the court still denied protection to these functional elements. Regardless of the status of the API or system interface required for compatibility, any parts of a program that a developer must copy — such as kernel headers, definition files, variables, or mandatory Linux kernel function calls — in order to create a Linux-compatible kernel module would not receive copyright protection.[0]
Note, Sega even offered Accolade a license (just as we discussed the potential for an alternative license above) that would have allowed Accolade to create Sega-compatible games. Notwithstanding this offer, the court declined to find copyright infringement in Accolade’s creation of Sega-compatible games without a license.
[0]: https://www.networkworld.com/article/836041/smb-encouraging-...
Who's an advocate here?
> Your comparison fails to understand how different these claims are.
Comparisons don't understand anything. I mean to draw attention to aspects shared by two different things.
> I don't think anyone imagines either is readily available given the number of rights holders
Me neither, but I don't think that's pertinent. Why do you?
Finally, you make an argument about interfaces, but I think the issue here is the use of CDDL licensed code, rather than the (re-)implementation of an interface. To me it seems like the finding in Sega v Accolade aren't relevant here.
Yes, I understand you meant to reason by analogy, and I told you that I think your analogy is flawed. When you reason by analogy, perhaps you should be prepared for someone to say, "That analogy doesn't make sense in this context." Mostly because -- your analogy doesn't make sense in this context. One, is an actual damages case, and the other is statutory damages case. When we are strictly discussing damages, your comparison is an apples to oranges comparison.
You said:
>>> If you receive software under a license that is too restrictive for you, then there is always the option to pay the rightholder (sic) to grant you a more permissive license
You suggest "there is always the option to pay the rightholder (sic) to grant you a more permissive license" and I'm saying that it's impossible in this circumstance? There is no one stop shop for the licensee. There is no 50 stop shop.
In your scenario, where we are to imagine an incompatibility exists, you also imagine a theoretical alternative license would be relevant to a court. And I'm saying, just as relevant, is the actual impossibility of obtaining the consent of either all ZFS licensors or all Linux licensors.
We've created effectively perpetually licensed software via our shared use of FOSS. And now one party we imagine saying -- actually these two works will be incompatible forever. You think a court won't think that's wild?
More significantly, this entire line of argument has an angels on the head of a pin quality. The GPL and the CDDL are the licenses that have already been chosen by Canonical, because Canonical didn't, like you, read an incompatibility into this CDDL-GPL combination. So -- fair enough that Canonical didn't feel the need to cast about for some theoretical alternative license, if it doesn't feel that the CDDL and the GPL are incompatible.
> I think the issue here is the use of CDDL licensed code
As discussed -- I don't think it matters much how the code is licensed. If it makes it easier, imagine the CDDL sourced code is actually a closed source, proprietary filesystem. So -- Linux provides a module interface, but it could be any interface. Just as in Sega, IMHO even proprietary code can use GPL licensed code, which provides an interface, for the purposes of interoperability. Why? Because "fair use".
If there are any SV billionaires out there, can you fund CUDA on OpenBSD please? :-P