thx, ed. this is a case where I am wondering whether EVERYONE, including all the commercial contributors to btrfs, would be better off with another additional license that also allowed kernel integration for companies like Apple. the decision-making (and rights) for btrfs are so dispersed, however, that we may all end up with a worse outcome, including the commercial and other contributors. (perhaps, it would be worth asking them, if a mailing list of contributors to btrfs existed.)
I am and I am not a fan of Apple. they scare me. I am afraid that Apple will be much worse than IBM and Microsoft ever were. I would rather not see them get more than 20% market share. still, the world is what it is. now, specifically, which contributors to btrfs would it hurt if Apple were allowed to integrate the code into its kernel to make btrfs its main file system? I can only think of Microsoft as a company that might be hurt. FAT is the universal file system now, and it could lose that status. Microsoft may not have wanted to contribute to btrfs in this case to begin with. did they ever contribute here? I cannot imagine that any server company, like Sun, Oracle, or IBM, would be worse off if OSX and linux would both use btrfs. it would probably make their life a whole lot easier. linux on the desktop would be MUCH better off compared to the current situation with everyone using their own almost-compatible file system, and more so than OSX on the desktop would be better off. (linux on the server would probably be mildly better off, but here one can argue that Apple would get more than it contributes.) besides, the btrfs system would control the evolution of btrfs, not Apple. just my two cents... /iaw On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Edward Ned Harvey <ker...@nedharvey.com> wrote: >> From: linux-btrfs-ow...@vger.kernel.org [mailto:linux-btrfs- >> ow...@vger.kernel.org] On Behalf Of ivo welch >> >> curiosity question---could btrfs be licensed in multiple ways to allow >> Apple and other vendors to adopt it? > > No. The source code is copyrighted by many different entities, and the only > way to release it under any other license would require all of the > contributors to mutually agree. It'll never happen. Likewise, perhaps > Apple could release their code under a license that's compatible with GPL, > but I seriously doubt that would ever happen. > > >> as end users, having one good >> file system that works everywhere as a main root system would be >> heaven... > > Agreed. But the various producers of filesystems are generally commercial > entities interested in making a profit. For various reasons, many of them > intentionally don't go this direction. They're all trying to differentiate > themselves. > > Generally speaking, the problem is the requirement to integrate some other > FS into a kernel or other component that requires license compatibility for > booting. Generally speaking you can circumvent this problem by using things > like Fuse to mount a filesystem in user space, thus not requiring it to be > built into the kernel, thus eliminating any license compatibility problems. > > -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-btrfs" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
