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by temprature
3040 days ago
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Actual lawyers have also read both licenses and came to the conclusion that they are incompatible: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/ The main debate over the incompatibility isn't about GPL vs CDDL; even Canonical isn't arguing that the licenses aren't incompatible. It's specifically about the Linux kernel vs ZFS; ie. does linking the ZFS module with the Linux kernel make the ZFS module a derivative work of the Linux kernel. If yes, it has to be able to have the GPLv2 applied to it, which it can't. If no, then the incompatibility is irrelevant, and the kernel and ZFS can be distributed together and under their own separate licences. This is where opinions (by legal experts, not people on the internet) differ, the FSF and SFC's lawyers say this makes ZFS a derivative work and you can't distribute them together, Canonical's lawyers say it doesn't and therefore you can. |
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The Software Freedom Conservancy argues that not only is zfs.ko a derived work of Linux, but really any dynamically loaded Linux kernel module is a derived work (of Linux). To me that feels like a bit of a stretch, and one could make the opposite argument.
By virtue of the fact that zfs.ko is an optional module, rather than an integral part of Linux, it's not a derived work. ZFS.ko MUST be a separate entity from Linux in the first place; SINCE zfs.ko is a module, it MUST be logically discrete, while interacting with Linux through the standard, normal kernel interfaces. Further, it's likely that only if ZFS were distributed as a changeset against the Linux source code (rather than buildable as a distinct module) would it possibly be a derived work of Linux.
The statically vs. dynamically compiled (linking) distinction doesn't hold water as it is an arbitrary technical one that only has to do with how things are layed out on the filesytem and/or loaded into memory, since modules, plugins, add-ons, and similar things almost often can be either statically compiled in or dynamically loaded, of which there are many examples of in many existing software.