Erik Trimble <erik.trim...@oracle.com> wrote: > I don't mean to be a PITA, but I'm assuming that someone lawyerly has had the > appropriate discussions with the porting team about how linking against the > GPL'd Linux kernel means your kernel module has to be GPL-compatible. It > doesn't matter if you distribute it outside the general kernel source > tarball, what matters is that you're linking against a GPL program, and the > old GPL v2 doesn't allow for a non-GPL-compatibly-licensed module to do that.
It can of course also be distributed _inside_ the linux kernel tarball. Note that the FSF is very eager about having the GPL be an approved OSS license. Any OSS approved license need fo follow these rules: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php and in these rules you should check paragraph 9: ----> 9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software. Rationale: Distributors of open-source software have the right to make their own choices about their own software. <---- > If the new work is a whole new implementation of the ZFS *design* intended > for the linux kernel, then Yea! Great! (fortunately, it does sound like this > is what's going on) Otherwise, OpenSolaris CDDL'd code can't go into a Linux > kernel, module or otherwise. You are obviously wrong here! There is absolutely no problem with the original ZFS implementation going into the Linux kernel. The CDDL explicitely allows this and ZFS is a separate work. paragraph 9 in http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php requires the GPL to permit a separate work to be distrubuted along with GPL software. As all _independent_ lawyers I am aware of (and this are many) explain, linking against an independent work creates a collective work and no derivative work. The GPL would only hit if a derivative work was created but even under US Copyright law, a derivative work is not created by linking the linux kernel against ZFS. In case you don't know: The FSF is also very eager to explain you that the GPL should be interpreted as a "license" (a US law specific construct) instead of being a contract. The US Copyright law limits what you may legally put into a "license". What you may legally put into a license is controlled by OS Copyright law section 17 § 106. see: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106 The right to redefine the definition of what's a derivative work is not listed here and for this reason it cannot appear in the GPL "license" text. Linking unmodified works definitely does not create a derivative work but rather a collective work and in order to create a derivative work you need to make modifications that are copyrightable. As you see, creating a derivative work is a hurdle that cannot be made easily.... P.S. This are slightly modifies excerpts from a paper on OSS license compatibility written by my collegue Thomas Gordon (he is US lawyer). I will publish the whole paper next tuesday. For now, you may read the section on the GPL http://www.rosenlaw.com/Rosen_Ch06.pdf from Lawrence Rosen. He also explains why many of the claims in the GPL will never stand in court. PP.S.: Did you know that FreeBSD _includes_ the GPLd Reiserfs in the FreeBSD kernel since a while and that nobody did complain about this, see e.g.: http://svn.freebsd.org/base/stable/8/sys/gnu/fs/reiserfs/ Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
