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Comment by michaelneale | Hacker News Reader

I didn't think it was so much about the technical challenges but the licence and IP issues?

Indeed, there won't be any inclusion into the mainline tree unless Sun re/dual-licenses it to be GPL compatible. I'm just surprised that it's so far been FUSE-only, given that the non-GPL kernel module API exists. I guess it'll require distribution support for it to be practical, as compiling kernel modules to survive updates isn't exactly for the faint of heart.

> compiling kernel modules to survive updates isn't exactly for the faint of heart.

Nvidia's been doing fine so far. I know that distributions theoretically support them, but everyone I know uses envy-ng for some reason (new hardware support, problems with resolution, etc.) So even if the distribution is lagging behind, a good update script that is needed only during a system upgrade isn't that ugly... Especially if ZFS will be used by proper admins that will choose it based on what they really need.

Yep, but Nvidia has the necessary staff at hand. The situation for out-of-mainline modules is certainly getting better (thanks to symbol tables, etc.) but I still get that sinking feeling if I have to compile a kernel module.

I've had good experiences of using DKMS under Debian for 3rd-party proprietary driver modules that recompiles as necessary when updating to a new kernel.

Will SUN continue as an independent unit within Oracle ?

Wait a minute, hasn't ZFS already been ported to FreeBSD? Why can't Linux just take the FreeBSD version, which I presume is BSD licensed? Ditto for stuff like D-Trace. Or does FreeBSD actually allow inclusion of non-BSD-licensed code?

FreeBSD does allow for the inclusion of other licenses. The GPL 2 and CDDL are two prominent examples (though they are actively trying to remove as much GPL code from the tree as possible). Users who are unhappy with CDDL licensed code still have the option of disabling it in FreeBSD's build.

CDDL is source level, GPL is binary level. BSD is "do whatever the hell you feel like, I don't care, just include the license terms somewhere" level.

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