On: GPL Violations Related to Combining ZFS and Linux

[gillianseed]

Oh please, even the author of the CDDL license states that this is so (Danese Cooper).

And it's not as if that admission was ever needed, were you even around back then ?

Solaris was being killed in the market by Linux, Sun decided to go open source in an effort to better compete with Linux, but there was NO way that they would give away their prized technology (ZFS, DTrace) under a license which would allow their main competitor to whom they were losing, to integrate said technology.

Hence CDDL, GPLv2 incompatible.

[cyphar → gillianseed]

> Oh please, even the author of the CDDL license states that this is so (Danese Cooper).

Wikipedia mentions several other authors. Maybe Wikipedia is wrong, but I am doubtful only one person wrote the CDDL.

> Solaris was being killed in the market by Linux, Sun decided to go open source in an effort to better compete with Linux, but there was NO way that they would give away their prized technology (ZFS, DTrace) under a license which would allow their main competitor to whom they were losing, to integrate said technology.

That is one telling of the story. Other Sun employees have different tellings. It's not as cut and dry as you claim.

CDDL is GPL incompatible in a very subtle way. The copyright of the CDDL licensed code isn't infringed, it's technically the copyright of the GPL code that's infringed. CDDL allows distribution of the binaries under a different license (provided the license doesn't restrict the users' rights, which the GPL doesn't), but the source files must always be under the same license. The GPL requires the source files for the "dervied work" be under the same license, which is where the incompatibility steps in.