Andrew Holway andrew.holway@gmail.com wrote:
OK, plese note that I am not willing to tolerate anti-oss claims and will continue to correct similar false claims. If you don't like those discussions at all, you should try to avoid false claims and the need for corrections.
If I were RedHat, including a non GPL filesystem into my operating system would make me sweat a bit. Intel were facing a similar issue bundling OpenZFS with Lustre in their Intel Enterprise Edition for Lustre. They seem to have solved it by having the installer download the OpenZFS package during installation time.
There is no need to do it this way....
Note that it is without doubt that ZFS was not derived from the Linux kernel and thus cannot be a derived work.
Combining ZFS and Linux creates a so called "collective work" where each part can have it's own license.
See: http://www.oreilly.de/german/freebooks/gplger/pdf/025-168.pdf
line 70 (PDF line 46).
This is a GPL book from real lawyers that won the Harald Welte cases!
Important facts:
- ZFS has been developed independendtly from Linux
- ZFS of course works without Linux (when in OpenSolaris).
I however know that the FSF acts like the Mafia when it comes to GPL compatibility. Be careful not to believe false claims from people who ignore legal facts because they are acting political.
Jörg