Couldn't they have dual licensed it under both the CDDL and GPL? CDDL for when they distribute it with the closed drivers, then additionally distribute the source under the GPL allowing it to be used in Linux.

Probably not, since that would have allowed someone to add GPL-only code to it which couldn't be distributed with the whole.

The video is very good and you can follow-up with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6XQUciI-Sc

I don't understand; Sun would not have been obligated to accept contributions that were not similarly dual-licensed...

The same theory as the GPL, why allow people to use your work if you cannot use their additions in return?

Listen to it and the whole point he is making is we had to make way for proprietary drivers and not to block it being compatible with GPL.

Seem very much a grammar Judo to say we didn't go out of the way to be anti-compatible with GPL but we invented a copy left license so we could never be compatible with GPL.

Well how much work can you expect a for-profit-company to do in order to release their software as open source? They choose a licence that worked for them, then and there because of reasons. This included the work on ZFS.

There are operating systems that have licences that permit the ZFS code in the kernel. What reasons did SUN have to specifically block the Linux kernel but not BSD / Darwin ? The choice of license has everything to do whit what license SUN was comfortable using and nothing to do with keeping GNU/Linux out of the party.

If the answer is that a lot of their competitors at the time were invested in GNU/Linux and thus could not use their code, that is a very short sighted move.

> Well how much work can you expect a for-profit-company to do in order to release their software as open source?

A lot actually I expect them to make open source software and in all regards this has happened.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2914643/open-source-softwar...