Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by qb45 3244 days ago
> Oracle could release a new version of CDDL that explicitly made the ZoL project GPL compatible.

By allowing ZFS-derived works to be licensed under GPL, I suppose. I wonder if they could do it without allowing for a GPL fork which would become unmergable to the upstream?
1 comments
cyphar 3244 days ago
The problem would be similar to MIT or Apache licensing a project. It is very uncommon for someone to create a fork of an existing project _just_ to change the license. Most of the people working on OpenZFS are unlikely to just switch licenses, the net result would just be to allow dual-licensing under GPLv2 so you can use it in Linux.
link
qb45 3244 days ago
People working on OpenZFS are unlikely to switch licenses, but somebody (presumably a company) could possibly develop an "improved" fork to make money on it and refuse to contribute back, at which point Oracle would be forced to switch to GPL if the fork takes off.

Dunno, it's just a hypothetical question and speculation whether there are any sensible reasons for Oracle to maintain status quo.

link
mjg59 3244 days ago
ZoL and upstream ZFS have already diverged significantly, since Oracle stopped releasing source several years ago.
link