On Wednesday, February 7, 2024 10:59:38 PM CET Wols Lists wrote: > On 07/02/2024 11:11, J. Roeleveld wrote: > > On Tuesday, February 6, 2024 9:27:35 PM CET Wols Lists wrote: > >> On 06/02/2024 13:12, J. Roeleveld wrote: > >>>> Clearly Oracle likes this state of affairs. Either that, or they are > >>>> encumbered in some way from just GPLing the ZFS code. Since they on > >>>> paper own the code for both projects it seems crazy to me that this > >>>> situation persists. > >>> > >>> GPL is not necessarily the best license for releasing code. I've got > >>> some > >>> private projects that I could publish. But before I do that, I'd have to > >>> decide on a License. I would prefer something other than GPL. > >> > >> Okay. What do you want to achieve. Let's just lump licences into two > >> categories to start with and ask the question "Who do you want to free?" > > > > I want my code to be usable by anyone, but don't want anyone to fork it > > and > > start making money off of it without giving me a fair share. > > Okay, that instantly says you want a copyleft licence. So you're stuck > with a GPL-style licence, and if they want to include it in a commercial > closed source product, they need to come back to you and dual licence it. > > Personally, I'd go the MPL2 route, but that's my choice. It might not > suit you. But to achieve what you want, you need a copyleft, GPL-style > licence.
I'll have a look at that one. > >> If that sounds weird, it's because both Copyleft and Permissive claim to > >> be free, but have completely different target audiences. Once you've > >> answered that question, it'll make choosing a licence so much easier. > >> > >> GPL gives freedom to the END USER. It's intended to protect the users of > >> your program from being held to ransom. > > > > That's not how the kernel devs handle the GPL. They use it to remove > > choice > > from the end user (me) to use what I want (ZFS). > > And it's that which I don't like about the GPL. > > No. That's Oracle's fault. The kernel devs can't include ZFS in linux, > because Oracle (or rather Sun, at the time, I believe) deliberately > *designed* the ZFS licence to be incompatible with the GPL. Maybe not included fully into the kernel, but there is nothing preventing it to be packaged with a Linux distribution. It's just the hostility from Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman against ZFS causing the issues. See the following post for a clear description (much better written than I can): https://eerielinux.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/zfs-and-gpl-terror-how-much-freedom-is-there-in-linux/ Especially the lkml thread linked from there: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20190110182413.ga6...@kroah.com/ > After all, there's nothing stopping *you* from combining Linux and ZFS, > it's just that somebody else can't do that for you, and then give you > the resulting binary. Linux (kernel) and ZFS can't be merged. Fine. But, Linux (the OS, as in, kernel + userspace) and ZFS can be merged legally. > At the end of the day, if someone wants to be an arsehole, there's not a > lot you can do to stop them, and with ZFS that honour apparently goes to > Sun. See what I put above. -- Joost
