[delayed]

New drivers are MIT/GPL2 dual-licensed: https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules

Doesn't that still require the closed source user space driver to function? I'd love to be wrong on that one.

In the short-term yes, in the long term the user space driver would also get open (or replaced with nouveau, since it will be on equal footing with the closed one, when communicating with kernel; just like the open vs closed amd drivers).

However, what will be left is a blob, that runs on the dedicated core on the GPU. The stuff that Nvidia doesn't want to open is moved there, and that's why the open kernel driver works only on Turing and newer.

> However, what will be left is a blob, that runs on the dedicated core on the GPU

But that basically firmware, right? So not all that different from the firmware loaded by a NIC?

Yes, exactly the same thing.

Honestly the nvidia thing was always annoying because it seems like the linux devs are more aggressive about licensing with an actual full-on Open Source project than the very much closed-source nvidia drivers. They even both use the same approach of having a GPL wrapper to talk to the non-GPL code AFAIK:\

That might be a bad example. I'd trust ZFS and the CDDL before NVIDIA any day. At least the CDDL is designed with the intention of being open attemps to work with other licenses. NVIDIA seems hellbent on working around the GPL.

The original intention of the license doesn’t really matter when its current copyright holder is Oracle.

Oracle is *a* copyright holder, but they have no control over the direction of the OpenZFS fork.

I’m not concerned about the direction of development, I’m concerned about Oracle holding the (or at least a significant part of) copyright to some software which is used as a Linux module, but which is licensed under a license which is (arguably) incompatible with the GPL.

If Oracle wanted to, they could easily release their copyright under a dual license or something else to clear up the licensing issue. They have not, and have chosen to retain the ability to sue every Linux user using ZFS. This concerns me.

It doesn’t really matter on whose “side” the conflict lies; the license is arguably GPL-incompatible, and Linux is not going to change its license. But Oracle could, if they wanted to. And they evidently don’t want to, which is concerning.

It's plainly obvious why they don't. Oracle still sells *their* fork of ZFS.

Back in the pre-oracle days Sun's fishworks division sold ZFS-based storage appliances. Oracle still sells those, and thanks to ZFS' reputation they're still profitable. Oracle simply took that much older fork of ZFS (with no OpenZFS code in it) and made it closed-source.

Before anyone asks, no, that fork is too old and too diverged to be compatible with OpenZFS.

All the more reason for Oracle to someday do something to put all those Linux ZFS servers into a questionable legal status. They could then stand with a carrot in their other hand, waving their own unquestionably legal version of “ZFS”.

I don't think you understand how this works. Sun already gave all their power away via the CDDL.

We're currently in a legally-stable state, and have been for over a decade now (nearly two). If they could have done something, they would have.

The fact is that so long as nobody tries to merge ZFS code into the mainline kernel, there's nothing they can do. Everybody knows this, everybody agrees that would be a dumb idea, and everybody has agreed not to do it.

Modules don't have to be under licences compatible with the GPL. There is no universe where you could possibly argue ZFS is a derived work of the kernel. None.

Oracle can't actually sue people using ZFS modules. The CDDL licence that sun provided already gave all the relevant rights away. They can only sue from the GPL side as a kernel contributor, and that's ONLY if someone is dumb enough to ship ZFS code in the linux source tree.

You *seriously* underestimate the number of people using ZoL in production that Oracle would love to sue *if they could.*

The sad part is the kernel devs can't tell the difference. Doesn't matter if something is open source or proprietary, if they can't take it and relicence it under their GPLv2 licence then it deserves no comfort.