On Thu, 9 Aug 2007, Derek E. Lewis wrote: > If the text of the GPL was actually read, those concerned would understand > that Linux could have ZFS and DTrace now, along with any other piece of code > licensed under the CDDL.
No, that is not clear, and IANAL and neither are you it seems. While this aspect of the GPL has not been taken to court, AFAIK, most legal folks go under the assumption that the licenses are incompatible. > Unfortunately, this does not seem to be possible, > given the majority of people that work with GPL'd license code > seem to be set upon making the imagined 'linking clause' reality when, in > fact, the text of the GPL contains no instances of the word 'link'. I agree with you, in principal, but in reality the legal weanies are siding with them also, and those are the folks that are most intimately familiar with law, IMO. > From my research, a ZFS or DTrace Linux port would only require the sources > be distributed separately. Binaries could still be shipped with a Linux > distribution, as the GPL is strictly a source-level license if one assumes > the imaginary 'linking clause' is, in fact, imaginary. Maybe so, but your research is not under a legal perspective, is it? IOW, if you are a lawyer, you would be in that position. > With this said, I fail to see how adopting a license that contains such > ambiguities could be beneficial towards OpenSolaris. Considering that the majority of open source software development is being done under this license, it's not something that can be ignored. In the best world all of our sources would be licensed under the BSD 3 clause, my favorite license of any to date. Only use it if you want your sources to truely be free and open, for everyone. My $0.02. -- Alan DuBoff - Solaris x86 IHV/OEM Group _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
