Re:FreeBSD and ZFS
by Sanddancer on Friday February 26, 2016 @11:39PM
(#11186090)
No, the FreeBSD foundation is showing that different entities, with different licenses, can cooperate. As the SFLC mentioned in their original posting, combining ZFS in the kernel feels little more than damnum absque injuria. In order for any judgement to be laid, there has to be shown some sort of injured party. Who is injured exactly by integrating a kernel module with primarily CDDL code with the Linux kernel, which itself already includes many binary only files where the licensing is questionable?
> damnum absque injuria
Neat, but the definitions I found say that's "harm without a legal wrong" (such as reducing someone's income by opening a competing shop).
To my untrained eye, the Linux kernel issue seems to be a legal wrong without harm, as you say ...
> Who is injured exactly by integrating a kernel module with primarily CDDL code with the Linux kernel
Oracle as the sole copyright holder of zfs might be because thy lose potential Solaris sales when zfs is distributed with Linux this way. At least they could argue that before some court
Oracle was the original copyright holder before the OpenSolaris fiasco and Illumos was forked.
There still are a lot of lines in a lot of files that were written by Sun employees which are now owned by Oracle. So the same way a kernel developer has a potential standing to sue canonical over their potential GPL violation, Oracle has the same potential standing to sue canonical over their potential CDDL violation.
It's just that oracle is ever so much more likely to sue and actually win (see: the google api's are copyrightable case)
Like there is no need to market its product then?
There's no need for BSD to comment on their "longstanding relationship" with ZFS if they're only saying "we have it and it works within our framework" versus adding something constructive to the dialog on its licensing in Linux. It's awesome that the BSD and ZFS licenses are compatible and that it works well. It just has nothing to do with the headlines they are addressing.