On Fri, 2005-11-18 at 13:08 +0100, Stefan Held wrote: > AFAIK the CDDL is a BSD Style License. So where exactly do you come to > the conclusion that Software written under this license can't be used in > a GPL'ed environment? Not only is it not compatible (as others pointed out quite eloquently), but is not compatible on purpose, IMNSHO. Sun absolutely need to distribute OpenSolaris code under CDDL, in order to prevent exactly what was asked here - an outflow of technology from Solaris to Linux (and that's where those patents licensed to CDDL code only come in even more handy). That's why they picked that licence and not the GPL in the first place. People that contribute to OpenSolaris are always going to be at Sun's mercy to keep releasing the closed binaries (remember, half of "Open"Solaris is closed binaries). If Sun goes bust tomorrow, who's going to give those people an up-to-date copy of the binaries? Exactly! Furthermore, Sun are in the unique position here, not only because they control those binaries, but because they can ship a binary only Solaris distro with bits that others don't have access to at all (though their long standing relationships with various proprietary software vendors). So, people that are working on OpenSolaris effectively become free of charge Sun employees. Really nice touch. IMNSHO, that part was also designed on purpose, because Sun realised that they cannot maintain Solaris as a proprietary Unix forever (it was evident for a while that Linux gets new stuff way faster), so they went on to recruit open source community to work for them for free. Thanks, but no thanks. Contrast this with true open source companies like Red Hat (note: I am not a RH employee). If Red Hat went bust today, anyone could take all Red Hat code (including Fedora, RHEL, GFS etc.) and continue at exactly the same point where Red Hat left off (in fact, people like CentOS are doing exactly that already). It is simply not possible to do that with "Open"Solaris, because Sun controls vital binary bits and reserves the right to release "slightly different" binaries in their proprietary version, thus shifting the balance of power from the community to themselves. So, unless Sun change their mind, I don't think we'll see ZFS in Linux at all. They may as well do that if the OpenSolaris thing doesn't pan out the way they expected. Only future will tell. PS. I know that I will now forever be labelled as a "nut-case" by Sun lovers, but I like to call is as see it. -- Bojan -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
