-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 6/11/2010 12:32 AM, Erik Trimble wrote: > On 6/10/2010 9:04 PM, Rodrigo E. De León Plicet wrote: >> On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 7:14 PM, Anurag Agarwal<anu...@kqinfotech.com> >> wrote: >> >>> We at KQInfotech, initially started on an independent port of ZFS to >>> linux. >>> When we posted our progress about port last year, then we came to >>> know about >>> the work on LLNL port. Since then we started working on to re-base our >>> changing on top Brian's changes. >>> >>> We are working on porting ZPL on that code. Our current status is that >>> mount/unmount is working. Most of the directory operations and >>> read/write is >>> also working. There is still lot more development work and testing that >>> needs to be going in this. But we are committed to make this happen so >>> please stay tuned. >>> >> >> Good times ahead! >> > 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. > > As a workaround, take a look at what nVidia did for their X driver - it > uses a GPL'd kernel module as a shim, which their codebase can then call > from userland. Which is essentially what the ZFS FUSE folks have been > reduced to doing. > > > 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. >
Actually my understanding of this is that it revolves around distribution (copying - since it's based on copyright) of the code. If the developers distribute source code, which is then compiled and linked to the GPL code by the *end-user* then there are no issues, since the person combining the 2 codebases is not distributing the combined work further. The grey-er area (though it can still be ok if I understand correctly) is when the code is distributed pre-compiled. On one hand presumably GPL headers were used to do the compiling, but on the other it is still the *end-user* that links the 2 'programs' together and that's what really matters. I beleive this is how all the proprietary binary drivers for linux get around this issue. All the licenses do is hamper distribution. The vendors using shims may do so to make it easier to be included in major linux distributions? -Kyle > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJMEi8JAAoJEEADRM+bKN5w/z0IAMMPo0tcCY2jFb0pJ5Ee6M1j HJFdpTlg5eMsyIJ/4+lj/G1haMnn2YTD5UT4LWkg5x7LSwqCtNA+lRgcTc5zoYQ3 SievVfCaJ4lal3xB2AoKLzhNd4BxDG4bLBI8S1q8LEyx+J2bhbleWpkATwegJ9N/ xA0yecoQAqxwOv3gOTr7DKbCyo/t4VxXkgKxKHauztYy5JMg/UqhRwQrKnfL4E7H 4qZpqapi81+G77d16cEpCcZvG1lgEYfMas4+5Eju5x1BteXsWs87cWZhVJLN0Pkl p+CPHSgt0CtP+Wg07ojvHRGbnm32uaLEEmN1ieb08YqEEFsLXE6l5qgEg9fv3cU= =PByp -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
