Alvin ONeal wrote: > I've been reading a little bit about ZFS and how it can't be included > with the linux kernel due to licensing issues. However, the nVidia and > ATI drivers aren't open-source and I don't hear to many complaints > about that. > > So what's the big deal? Is there a particular reason that someone > couldn't port ZFS to linux as a third-party driver rather than in the > kernel? > > AJ ONeal > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Well, there are a few things going on here. First, for at least the nVidia driver, I believe they provide some sort of "shim code" which is GPLd, and is the module that links into the kernel. That module then may use a BLOB (the closed driver). However, since the shim is the only piece that's loaded into the kernel, its the only thing that needs to have a GPL-compatible license. Since it's GPLd, it's definitely compatible. I don't know about the ATI driver. In any case, even if the driver was loaded directly into the kernel, as long as it was licensed with a GPL-compatible license, it'd be okay.
ZFS is licensed under the CDDL license, which is (apparently deliberately) incompatible with GPL. That means that CDDL code and GPL code cannot be linked together in any form, kernel or otherwise. There is a user-space implementation of ZFS being developed using the FUSE framework. Lloyd -- Lloyd Brown Systems Administrator Fulton Supercomputing Lab Brigham Young University http://marylou.byu.edu -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
