Re: ZFS on linux

[Kevin Kofler]

Gerald B. Cox wrote:
> Fedora has it's own rules and can ship or not ship what they want.  I'm
> perfectly fine with that.  As I previously stated, IMO BTRFS is a much
> better choice.  My point was simply that I don't believe saying it would
> be a GPL violation to include ZFS in a Linux distribution is one of them. 
> If it were, I can't imagine Canonical would be doing it.

Canonical also has no qualms shipping the NVidia driver, which has the exact 
same licensing issue. They decided that they don't care.

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Re: ZFS on linux

[Andrew Lutomirski]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 7:38 AM, Neal Gompa <ngomp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 10:13 AM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kof...@chello.at> wrote:
>> Gerald B. Cox wrote:
>>> Fedora has it's own rules and can ship or not ship what they want.  I'm
>>> perfectly fine with that.  As I previously stated, IMO BTRFS is a much
>>> better choice.  My point was simply that I don't believe saying it would
>>> be a GPL violation to include ZFS in a Linux distribution is one of them.
>>> If it were, I can't imagine Canonical would be doing it.
>>
>> Canonical also has no qualms shipping the NVidia driver, which has the exact
>> same licensing issue. They decided that they don't care.
>>
>
> Canonical ships everything as source code, so their justification
> likely is that they aren't doing binary distribution, for whatever
> that's worth.
>
> The benchmark is probably what Debian and their team thinks of it,
> because Debian and Fedora have similarly strict guidelines for stuff
> like this because they *do* care.

As a technical matter, Fedora could ship ZFS source only.  I don't
know whether that would help the legal issues.
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Gerald B. Cox]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 9:55 AM, Kevin Fenzi  wrote:

> The benchmark if it's legal to include something in Fedora is
> what Fedora Legal says.
>

I basically would agree with everything you stated, except I would change
the sentence to read:  "The benchmark if it's permissible..."
Fedora has it's own rules, but when you use the term "legal" the
connotation is that the other distributions which are distributing ZFS
are breaking the law.  Fedora cannot make that determination; and blanket
statements like that lead to FUD and misquotes.
If Fedora chooses not to distribute ZFS for any reason, that is perfectly
fine - however, the fact
that we choose not to do so doesn't make it illegal.
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Neal Gompa]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 10:13 AM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kof...@chello.at> wrote:
> Gerald B. Cox wrote:
>> Fedora has it's own rules and can ship or not ship what they want.  I'm
>> perfectly fine with that.  As I previously stated, IMO BTRFS is a much
>> better choice.  My point was simply that I don't believe saying it would
>> be a GPL violation to include ZFS in a Linux distribution is one of them.
>> If it were, I can't imagine Canonical would be doing it.
>
> Canonical also has no qualms shipping the NVidia driver, which has the exact
> same licensing issue. They decided that they don't care.
>

Canonical ships everything as source code, so their justification
likely is that they aren't doing binary distribution, for whatever
that's worth.

The benchmark is probably what Debian and their team thinks of it,
because Debian and Fedora have similarly strict guidelines for stuff
like this because they *do* care.

I don't know if it's possible to talk to the Debian folks about it,
because they've clearly discussed it for quite a while[0][1][2]. In
terms of legal things, Debian appears to use the SFLC for legal advice
about ZFS, and I don't know (nor wish to speculate) whether Red Hat
Legal talks to those folks.

[0]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447
[1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg6.html
[2]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/05/msg4.html



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Re: ZFS on linux

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 10:38:42 -0500
Neal Gompa <ngomp...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 10:13 AM, Kevin Kofler
> <kevin.kof...@chello.at> wrote:
> > Gerald B. Cox wrote:  
> >> Fedora has it's own rules and can ship or not ship what they
> >> want.  I'm perfectly fine with that.  As I previously stated, IMO
> >> BTRFS is a much better choice.  My point was simply that I don't
> >> believe saying it would be a GPL violation to include ZFS in a
> >> Linux distribution is one of them. If it were, I can't imagine
> >> Canonical would be doing it.  
> >
> > Canonical also has no qualms shipping the NVidia driver, which has
> > the exact same licensing issue. They decided that they don't care.
> >  
> 
> Canonical ships everything as source code, so their justification
> likely is that they aren't doing binary distribution, for whatever
> that's worth.

I'm confused by the two above sentences. :) The NVida binary only non
free driver's source is only available to AMD/nvidia. The shim that
connects it to the kernel has source available, but the driver
itself does not. 

> The benchmark is probably what Debian and their team thinks of it,
> because Debian and Fedora have similarly strict guidelines for stuff
> like this because they *do* care.

Nope. The benchmark if it's legal to include something in Fedora is
what Fedora Legal says. Thats it. We have (and likely will continue) to
disagree with Debian on some things (like mp3). 

IMHO, someone needs to ask Legal if it can be included. If for some
reason things have changed and they say yes, then it would hit the out
of tree kmods issues and likely be impractical there.

So, no, I don't think it's going to be possible or practical to include
ZFS. 

kevin


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Re: ZFS on linux

[Reindl Harald]

Am 16.01.2016 um 19:43 schrieb Gerald B. Cox:


On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 9:55 AM, Kevin Fenzi > wrote:

The benchmark if it's legal to include something in Fedora is
what Fedora Legal says.


I basically would agree with everything you stated, except I would
change the sentence to read:  "The benchmark if it's permissible..."
Fedora has it's own rules, but when you use the term "legal" the
connotation is that the other distributions which are distributing ZFS
are breaking the law


nonsense

if it comes to law topics in many cases 5 lawyers are coming up with 6 
opinions and every decision made has *nothing* to do with any other party



Fedora cannot make that determination


it don't make it for others
it just makes it for Fedora

if Redhat legal says "no" to be on the safe side that has *nothing* to 
do with any otehr distribution



blanket statements like that lead to FUD and misquotes.
If Fedora chooses not to distribute ZFS for any reason, that is
perfectly fine - however, the fact
that we choose not to do so doesn't make it illegal


see above

and now please *stop* this topic
ZFS and external kmods don't make it to Fedora
suck it!



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Re: ZFS on linux

[Chris Murphy]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:39 PM, Luya Tshimbalanga
<l...@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> Does Oracle include ZFS in their ISO by default?

No, and as far as I know they don't contribute to ZFS on Linux. There
is a distinction between ZFS and OpenZFS that's kinda important. ZFS
on Linux is based on OpenZFS, not ZFS. There're incompatible features
since pool version 28 in each, so they're essentially diverging. I
don't know if that qualifies them as defacto forks (either from each
other, or from ZFS pool version 28). Anyway, Oracle only includes ZFS
in Solaris. And they continue to contribute to Btrfs.


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Re: ZFS on linux

[Reindl Harald]

Am 16.01.2016 um 22:07 schrieb Neal Gompa:

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Chris Murphy <li...@colorremedies.com> wrote:

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:39 PM, Luya Tshimbalanga
<l...@fedoraproject.org> wrote:

Does Oracle include ZFS in their ISO by default?


No, and as far as I know they don't contribute to ZFS on Linux. There
is a distinction between ZFS and OpenZFS that's kinda important. ZFS
on Linux is based on OpenZFS, not ZFS. There're incompatible features
since pool version 28 in each, so they're essentially diverging. I
don't know if that qualifies them as defacto forks (either from each
other, or from ZFS pool version 28). Anyway, Oracle only includes ZFS
in Solaris. And they continue to contribute to Btrfs.


They do, however, include DTrace in their distribution, which remains
CDDL licensed in their distribution


stop that FUD - CDDL is not the problem - MIXING is the topic
and don't bring "cdrecrord" to the topic, the author is the problem

back to topic:
even if DTrace would be closed source Oracle could include it because 
tehy are the *copyright holder* and can release it under *every* license 
they like to do





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Re: ZFS on linux

[Reindl Harald]

Am 16.01.2016 um 22:19 schrieb Neal Gompa:

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 4:18 PM, Reindl Harald <h.rei...@thelounge.net> wrote:



Am 16.01.2016 um 22:07 schrieb Neal Gompa:


On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Chris Murphy <li...@colorremedies.com>
wrote:


On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:39 PM, Luya Tshimbalanga
<l...@fedoraproject.org> wrote:


Does Oracle include ZFS in their ISO by default?


No, and as far as I know they don't contribute to ZFS on Linux. There
is a distinction between ZFS and OpenZFS that's kinda important. ZFS
on Linux is based on OpenZFS, not ZFS. There're incompatible features
since pool version 28 in each, so they're essentially diverging. I
don't know if that qualifies them as defacto forks (either from each
other, or from ZFS pool version 28). Anyway, Oracle only includes ZFS
in Solaris. And they continue to contribute to Btrfs.


They do, however, include DTrace in their distribution, which remains
CDDL licensed in their distribution


stop that FUD - CDDL is not the problem - MIXING is the topic
and don't bring "cdrecrord" to the topic, the author is the problem

back to topic:
even if DTrace would be closed source Oracle could include it because tehy
are the *copyright holder* and can release it under *every* license they
like to do


DTrace is a kernel module that is CDDL licensed in Oracle Linux. So, not FUD


come on get a laywer and dicuss that topic somewhere else

first they laywer needs to find out *which* of both licenses maybe 
violated - if it's the CDDL then it's no problem for Oracle, if it's the 
GPL, well it needs a lawsuit in doubt


IT DOES NOT MATTER what Oracle does
IT DOES NOT MATTER what anybody else does
ABOVE DOES NOT MATTER for Fedora

licensing is a minefield and hence Fedora / Redhat legal stays on the 
SAVE SIDE - so WHAT needs to be discussed again and again


and since you still did not realize it:
even without the legal questions a out-of-tree module WON'T make it into 
Fedora and so the whole topic is done






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Re: ZFS on linux

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 10:43:12 -0800
"Gerald B. Cox"  wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 9:55 AM, Kevin Fenzi  wrote:
> 
> > The benchmark if it's legal to include something in Fedora is
> > what Fedora Legal says.
> >  
> 
> I basically would agree with everything you stated, except I would
> change the sentence to read:  "The benchmark if it's permissible..."
> Fedora has it's own rules, but when you use the term "legal" the
> connotation is that the other distributions which are distributing ZFS
> are breaking the law.  Fedora cannot make that determination; and
> blanket statements like that lead to FUD and misquotes.
> If Fedora chooses not to distribute ZFS for any reason, that is
> perfectly fine - however, the fact
> that we choose not to do so doesn't make it illegal.

I can't image anyone misinterpreting my statement that way, but yes, I
was not trying to suggest anything anyone else does is legal or not,
simply that any inclusion in Fedora would need approval of Fedora legal
and continuing to post about it or speculate is just a waste of time. 

kevin



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Re: ZFS on linux

[Reindl Harald]

Am 16.01.2016 um 20:51 schrieb Gerald B. Cox:

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 11:35 AM, Kevin Fenzi > wrote:

I can't image anyone misinterpreting my statement that way, but yes, I
was not trying to suggest anything anyone else does is legal or not,
simply that any inclusion in Fedora would need approval of Fedora legal
and continuing to post about it or speculate is just a waste of time.

ROFL... you know the internet Kevin... and any conspiracy theory can and
will be
propagated... but I didn't believe you intended to imply that...


hence the next time as Fedora legal directly instead repeat the same 
discussion again (it's not the first time this topic appeared) where 
people in the thread even point to "Oracle Linux" with "but they do too" 
while Orcale holds all copryrights and patents in ZFS after buyed Sun 
long ago




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Re: ZFS on linux

[Luya Tshimbalanga]

On 14/01/16 02:28 PM, Dave Love wrote:
> Reindl Harald <h.rei...@thelounge.net> writes:
>
>>>> who is "Lawrence Livermore"?
>>> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is an organization founded by
>>> the University of California to do research and development for
>>> academic and government purposes. The US Department of Energy
>>> commissioned them to port ZFS to Linux quite a long time ago[0], which
>>> is the foundation of the current ZFS on Linux codebase.
>> and they build a large, genral purpose, linux distribution?
> Doubtless it doesn't count, but an old version of the LLNL HPC-oriented
> GNU/Linux distribution which incorporates ZFS is at
> <ftp://gdo-lc.ucllnl.org/pub/projects/chaos/5.1/SRPMS/>.  (I don't know
> if the RHEL7-derived one is published.)  There's another from a US lab
> that you may have heard of
> <http://ftp2.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/>.
>
> There is a distribution of Linux by a US corporation with CDDL modules
> <http://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL7/UEKR3/x86_64/index_src.html>
> for their general purpose GNU/Linux distribution.
>
Does Oracle include ZFS in their ISO by default? If so, it is asking for
trouble by violating GPL license mixing with an incompatible CDDL. Note
that Oracle owns ZFS and has the liberty to sue any large commercial
distribution. For that reason, it is not worth a legal risk.

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Re: ZFS on linux

[Gerald B. Cox]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 11:35 AM, Kevin Fenzi  wrote:

> I can't image anyone misinterpreting my statement that way, but yes, I
> was not trying to suggest anything anyone else does is legal or not,
> simply that any inclusion in Fedora would need approval of Fedora legal
> and continuing to post about it or speculate is just a waste of time.
>

ROFL... you know the internet Kevin... and any conspiracy theory can and
will be
propagated... but I didn't believe you intended to imply that...
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Neal Gompa]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Chris Murphy <li...@colorremedies.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:39 PM, Luya Tshimbalanga
> <l...@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>> Does Oracle include ZFS in their ISO by default?
>
> No, and as far as I know they don't contribute to ZFS on Linux. There
> is a distinction between ZFS and OpenZFS that's kinda important. ZFS
> on Linux is based on OpenZFS, not ZFS. There're incompatible features
> since pool version 28 in each, so they're essentially diverging. I
> don't know if that qualifies them as defacto forks (either from each
> other, or from ZFS pool version 28). Anyway, Oracle only includes ZFS
> in Solaris. And they continue to contribute to Btrfs.
>

They do, however, include DTrace in their distribution, which remains
CDDL licensed in their distribution.



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Re: ZFS on linux

[Neal Gompa]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 4:18 PM, Reindl Harald <h.rei...@thelounge.net> wrote:
>
>
> Am 16.01.2016 um 22:07 schrieb Neal Gompa:
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Chris Murphy <li...@colorremedies.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 12:39 PM, Luya Tshimbalanga
>>> <l...@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Does Oracle include ZFS in their ISO by default?
>>>
>>>
>>> No, and as far as I know they don't contribute to ZFS on Linux. There
>>> is a distinction between ZFS and OpenZFS that's kinda important. ZFS
>>> on Linux is based on OpenZFS, not ZFS. There're incompatible features
>>> since pool version 28 in each, so they're essentially diverging. I
>>> don't know if that qualifies them as defacto forks (either from each
>>> other, or from ZFS pool version 28). Anyway, Oracle only includes ZFS
>>> in Solaris. And they continue to contribute to Btrfs.
>>
>>
>> They do, however, include DTrace in their distribution, which remains
>> CDDL licensed in their distribution
>
>
> stop that FUD - CDDL is not the problem - MIXING is the topic
> and don't bring "cdrecrord" to the topic, the author is the problem
>
> back to topic:
> even if DTrace would be closed source Oracle could include it because tehy
> are the *copyright holder* and can release it under *every* license they
> like to do
>

DTrace is a kernel module that is CDDL licensed in Oracle Linux. So, not FUD.



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Re: ZFS on linux

[Ric Wheeler]

On 01/14/2016 07:29 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:

C - Find maintainers ( I would volunteer - I'd have to learn packaging)

>
>I'd certainly be willing to assist if it were allowed.

I will be honest and say I do not foresee this being allowed in an
official capacity.  People are better off using the existing ZFS repo
or contacting rpmfusion about it.

To be clear, maintainers would need to be willing to deal with any and
all kernel issues reported with ZFS loaded.  We cannot staff the
existing "next-generation" filesystem that is already upstream, let
alone another that never will be.

Also, willing maintainers should be item A:).



Being a maintainer of a file system is a very, very large task. Specifically, 
file systems (especially ZFS and btrfs) have a lot of hooks/dependencies into 
the core IO/block layer and memory management system.


It definitely is not a "packaging" job, you need serious kernel skills here.

Putting the license aside, I think that it would be a really bad idea to pull in 
any kernel component that was not upstream in the mainline kernel.  The 
maintainers of the ZFS code (who I know) can share the pain of chasing the rest 
of the kernel.  Building a file system as a kernel module or having it built in 
is just a packaging issue, we should not use packaging as a way to circumvent 
legal and community norms (in Fedora or the upstream kernel community).


Coming back to the issue of the license, I think that there is no chance that it 
will ever land in the upstream kernel as long as it has this license.


My personal opinion is that the effort is better spent on working on btrfs or 
the host of technologies in device mapper that provide very similar 
features/functions to what people are looking for in ZFS.


Regards,

Ric
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Dave Love]

Stephen John Smoogen  writes:

> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a US Government/Department
> of Energy laboratory that UC Berkeley has a hand in managing. It was
> not founded by the University of California but came out of the post
> Manhatten project to build the hydrogen bomb. The US DOE did not
> commission the lab to make the port. The port was done as part of a
> project to have a large scale filesystem work for certain computer
> clusters. That work got special permission from Sun but those
> permissions look to be sealed.

To be clear for people not familiar with this, there are two levels of
(then) Sun filesystems involved.  They use many ZFS filesystem (pool)
instances to back the Lustre parallel filesystem.  ZFS replaces the
original Lustre ext-ish stuff.  See the history in
.  [I'm
not sure the rms quote there is in context.]

> Just because a port was done and then released does not mean that
> Lawrence Livermore is using it in any large way etc. There are
> thousands of projects that come out of these labs which maybe 3-20
> students, grad students and phd's worked on but aren't in any use.
> Most of them will get that file attached to them which doesn't mean
> that LLNL sactioned it, DOE commission it etc etc. It just means that
> it was done at the lab as part of some project and the law requires
> that the file is attached to it.

Yes, but this specifically concerns the Sequoia 50 PB, 800 GB/s parallel
filesystem, e.g.
 and the above.
I assume it's served off EL6-ish systems, by the way.
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Gerald B. Cox]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 4:07 PM, Neal Gompa <ngomp...@gmail.com> wrote:

> LLNL is still actively involved in the ZFS on Linux project, so they
> are still doing something with it.
>

Correct, and that can be discovered with a Google search - which found this:
*https://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/OpenZFS%20-%20LinuxCon_0.pdf
<https://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/OpenZFS%20-%20LinuxCon_0.pdf>*

On the Canonical side there was this article with some comments on the
licensing issue:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item=Ubuntu-ZFS-Standard-Plans

Here is another link from the people who should know:
http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue

If the FSF believed the above statement from zfsonlinux  was not correct,
one would think they would
quickly and clearly rebuke it;  especially considering Canonical's plans.

I haven't found any such statement, perhaps someone else has the link.

Again, there can be a multitude of valid reasons that Fedora does not
include ZFS.
Personally, I think BTRFS is a much better choice than ZFS. I just don't
believe people should
hang their hat on GPL infringement.
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Chris Murphy]

ZFS on Linux: Copyright and Licensing Issues (pdf created april 2013)
This was written by a lawyer, but the disclaimer is this is a cursory
evaluation, not legal advice.
http://www.rtt-law.com/public/files/docs/Williams%20-%20Software%20copyrights%20white%20paper.pdf

But I still predict bigger obstacles. I just don't see how it'd ever
be OK to have a tainted kernel being used on installer media, and
that'd have to be the case in order to get install time support,
either for root fs or even as just /data or /srv storage. I'd eat my
hat (and a billy goat) if any of either the kernel, QA, or installer
teams were OK with this. It's too much work and risk for very little
upside. So it'd be a post-install package at best no matter what, in
which case what's the advantage of it being offered by Fedora rather
than from the ZoL org folks?

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Re: ZFS on linux

[Gerald B. Cox]

On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 9:16 PM, Rahul Sundaram <methe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> It depends on exactly what FSF knows and how Canonical is planning to do
> this.  It is not safe to assume FSF is even aware of all the details here.
> If you want FSF's opinion,  they have a public contact address for
> licensing questions and respond pretty quickly.Note that FSF's opinion
> although influential does not determine what Fedora legally can ship.  That
> has to be approved by Red Hat legal as well.
>
> And ... Fedora does not ship third party kernel modules.
>

Fedora has it's own rules and can ship or not ship what they want.  I'm
perfectly fine with that.  As I previously stated, IMO BTRFS is a much
better choice.  My point was simply that I don't believe saying it would be
a GPL violation to include ZFS in a Linux distribution is one of them.  If
it were, I can't imagine Canonical would be doing it.
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Gerald B. Cox]

On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 7:38 PM, Kevin Kofler 
wrote:

> Right. See also:
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Forbidden_items#cdrtools
>
>
> for another case where an upstream attempted mixing GPL and CDDL code, and
> Red Hat Legal's and the FSF's stance on it.
>

Kevin, I don't believe that is the case in this instance.  No one is
talking about mixing code.  If you do have something however specifically
regarding the FSF stance on
ZFS, I'd like to read it - I've searched and haven't been able to find
anything.  As I previously mentioned, one would think if the FSF had issue
with it they would
come out and rebuke all the statements out there that say it isn't an
issue; especially since Canonical is actively working on it.
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hi

On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 11:42 PM, Gerald B. Cox wrote:

Kevin, I don't believe that is the case in this instance.  No one is
> talking about mixing code.  If you do have something however specifically
> regarding the FSF stance on
> ZFS, I'd like to read it - I've searched and haven't been able to find
> anything.  As I previously mentioned, one would think if the FSF had issue
> with it they would
> come out and rebuke all the statements out there that say it isn't an
> issue; especially since Canonical is actively working on it.
>

It depends on exactly what FSF knows and how Canonical is planning to do
this.  It is not safe to assume FSF is even aware of all the details here.
If you want FSF's opinion,  they have a public contact address for
licensing questions and respond pretty quickly.Note that FSF's opinion
although influential does not determine what Fedora legally can ship.  That
has to be approved by Red Hat legal as well.

And ... Fedora does not ship third party kernel modules.

Rahul
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Zach Villers]

I understand. My thought was, that there seems to be a push to add support
in Debian and Ubuntu. Would it now be possible/make sense to create maybe a
nodebug kernel package based on a stable kernel supported by ZFS and
zfs/spl packages maybe even as a copr repo?

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:04 AM, Florian Weimer <fwei...@redhat.com> wrote:

> On 01/14/2016 03:26 PM, Zach Villers wrote:
> > Now that Debian has added zfs support to their experimental branch;
> > https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/zfs-linux_0.6.4.2-1.html
>
> I don't know where you got this information.  If a package is in NEW, it
> is not yet part of Debian.  In fact, it means that ftpmaster review
> (which includes both licensing and technical reviews) is still pending.
>  This query confirms that there is no zfs-linux source package in Debian:
>
> <
> https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=default=all=any=sourcenames=zfs-linux
> >
>
> Any Debian developer can upload packages to the NEW queue.  This does
> not mean they end up in the distribution.
>
> Florian
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On 14 January 2016 at 08:58, Zach Villers  wrote:
> I understand. My thought was, that there seems to be a push to add support
> in Debian and Ubuntu. Would it now be possible/make sense to create maybe a
> nodebug kernel package based on a stable kernel supported by ZFS and zfs/spl
> packages maybe even as a copr repo?
>

Here is a simple if then for figuring out how ZFS support may ever get
into Fedora:

1. Is ZFS now licensed under a GPL 2.0/BSD  or MIT license? [These
seem to be ones acceptable to be included into anything kernel
related.]

2. If yes, please email le...@redhat.com to see if a further review is
needed for patents or other problems.

3. If no, then "Not going to happen."



>
>
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Zach Villers]

Thanks Smooge/Florian. I respect your opinions, thoughts, and explanations.

Regards.

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 12:25 PM, Stephen John Smoogen 
wrote:

> On 14 January 2016 at 08:58, Zach Villers  wrote:
> > I understand. My thought was, that there seems to be a push to add
> support
> > in Debian and Ubuntu. Would it now be possible/make sense to create
> maybe a
> > nodebug kernel package based on a stable kernel supported by ZFS and
> zfs/spl
> > packages maybe even as a copr repo?
> >
>
> Here is a simple if then for figuring out how ZFS support may ever get
> into Fedora:
>
> 1. Is ZFS now licensed under a GPL 2.0/BSD  or MIT license? [These
> seem to be ones acceptable to be included into anything kernel
> related.]
>
> 2. If yes, please email le...@redhat.com to see if a further review is
> needed for patents or other problems.
>
> 3. If no, then "Not going to happen."
>
>
>
> >
> >
> > --
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> > devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
> > http://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
>
>
>
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ZFS on linux

[Zach Villers]

Now that Debian has added zfs support to their experimental branch;
https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/zfs-linux_0.6.4.2-1.html is there a
possibility that Fedora could add support/packages as well?

Regards,
Zach #aikidouke
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Neal Gompa]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Zach Villers  wrote:
> Well - If there was to be a plan, it would have to start with RH legal
> making that determination would it not?
>
> Could FESCO or the other council (sorry it escapes me ATM) take this up as a
> meeting item? Is it worth presenting for a legal determination?
>

There are two councils that matter: the Fedora Council[0] and the
Fedora Engineering Steering Committee[1]. Both of these will likely
have a say in this matter.

> In my mind, if it was approved by legal we would have to;
>
> A - determine with we were going to start building a kernel with nodebug
> turned off AND if it needs to be maintained as a separate kernel package to
> make sure that the kernel version tracked is supported by ZFS.

This should not be necessary, as our kernel is very close to mainline,
making it quite easy for kmod authors to target.

> B - Be prepared to support a filesystem that needs modules build by DKMS

This shouldn't be too terrible, as most of the userspace would treat
it like any other filesystem.

> C - Find maintainers ( I would volunteer - I'd have to learn packaging)

I'd certainly be willing to assist if it were allowed.

> D - Plan what release/testing, etc

Again, definitely willing to help out here.

> E - Decide if it when/if it would be supported in the installer and make
> those changes as well

I would hope that Anaconda would grow support for it if we did have it.

> F - do other stuff...
>

What else do you think would need to happen?

> Should this be presented on another list?
>

I think all the relevant stakeholders are present on this list. *If*
this goes anywhere, then we would make a proposal to the Fedora
Packaging Committee[2] for a policy change.

> Good Discussion all...
>

[0]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Council
[1]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Engineering_Steering_Committee
[2]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging_Committee

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Re: ZFS on linux

[Chris Murphy]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Zach Villers  wrote:
> Well - If there was to be a plan, it would have to start with RH legal
> making that determination would it not?
>
> Could FESCO or the other council (sorry it escapes me ATM) take this up as a
> meeting item? Is it worth presenting for a legal determination?

I think there are parallel "deal killers" including legal. It makes
sense to pursue them in an order that combines least effort with
greatest chance of failure. i.e. asking legal to do a bunch of work
doesn't make much sense (to me) if there isn't a critical mass of
people willing to do the work to create and maintain the packaging.
And it'd be a good idea to go through exactly what that work is, and
what Fedora resources will be needed, and ask those resources (kernel
team, Release Engineering, Fedora Packaging Council) what will be
needed and if they have the resources and interest available to help,
etc.

And again, what deficiency there is with the existing ZoL package for
Fedora, and how Fedora benefits having it offered within Fedora? I

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Re: ZFS on linux

[Reindl Harald]

Am 15.01.2016 um 01:07 schrieb Neal Gompa:

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 6:54 PM, Stephen John Smoogen <smo...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 14 January 2016 at 12:20, Neal Gompa <ngomp...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 2:14 PM, Reindl Harald <h.rei...@thelounge.net> wrote:

who is "Lawrence Livermore"?



Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is an organization founded by
the University of California to do research and development for
academic and government purposes. The US Department of Energy
commissioned them to port ZFS to Linux quite a long time ago[0], which
is the foundation of the current ZFS on Linux codebase.

Please do some research before actually saying things.


Might be good if you did also :).

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a US Government/Department
of Energy laboratory that UC Berkeley has a hand in managing. It was
not founded by the University of California but came out of the post
Manhatten project to build the hydrogen bomb. The US DOE did not
commission the lab to make the port. The port was done as part of a
project to have a large scale filesystem work for certain computer
clusters. That work got special permission from Sun but those
permissions look to be sealed.

Just because a port was done and then released does not mean that
Lawrence Livermore is using it in any large way etc. There are
thousands of projects that come out of these labs which maybe 3-20
students, grad students and phd's worked on but aren't in any use.
Most of them will get that file attached to them which doesn't mean
that LLNL sactioned it, DOE commission it etc etc. It just means that
it was done at the lab as part of some project and the law requires
that the file is attached to it.


LLNL is still actively involved in the ZFS on Linux project, so they
are still doing something with it


that don't make them to a general purpose Linux distibution which as the 
whole point of "who is "Lawrence Livermore?"




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Re: ZFS on linux

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On 14 January 2016 at 12:20, Neal Gompa <ngomp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 2:14 PM, Reindl Harald <h.rei...@thelounge.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Am 14.01.2016 um 19:57 schrieb Gerald B. Cox:
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Bill Nottingham <nott...@splat.cc
>>> <mailto:nott...@splat.cc>> wrote:
>>>
>>> As a rule, I try not to take legal licensing interpretations from a
>>> CTO
>>> who's trying to sell me the thing they're talking about the
>>> licensing of.
>>>
>>> We certainly could send that interpretation of CDDL/GPL and the
>>> kernel to the
>>> legal team... but I'm not sure they'd agree with it.
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, if Lawrence Livermore is doing it, and Canonical apparently plans
>>> to do it, it probably would be a good idea to get a determination from
>>> the legal team
>>
>>
>> who is "Lawrence Livermore"?
>>
>
> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is an organization founded by
> the University of California to do research and development for
> academic and government purposes. The US Department of Energy
> commissioned them to port ZFS to Linux quite a long time ago[0], which
> is the foundation of the current ZFS on Linux codebase.
>
> Please do some research before actually saying things.
>

Might be good if you did also :).

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a US Government/Department
of Energy laboratory that UC Berkeley has a hand in managing. It was
not founded by the University of California but came out of the post
Manhatten project to build the hydrogen bomb. The US DOE did not
commission the lab to make the port. The port was done as part of a
project to have a large scale filesystem work for certain computer
clusters. That work got special permission from Sun but those
permissions look to be sealed.

Just because a port was done and then released does not mean that
Lawrence Livermore is using it in any large way etc. There are
thousands of projects that come out of these labs which maybe 3-20
students, grad students and phd's worked on but aren't in any use.
Most of them will get that file attached to them which doesn't mean
that LLNL sactioned it, DOE commission it etc etc. It just means that
it was done at the lab as part of some project and the law requires
that the file is attached to it.



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Re: ZFS on linux

[Dave Love]

Reindl Harald <h.rei...@thelounge.net> writes:

>>> who is "Lawrence Livermore"?
>>
>> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is an organization founded by
>> the University of California to do research and development for
>> academic and government purposes. The US Department of Energy
>> commissioned them to port ZFS to Linux quite a long time ago[0], which
>> is the foundation of the current ZFS on Linux codebase.
>
> and they build a large, genral purpose, linux distribution?

Doubtless it doesn't count, but an old version of the LLNL HPC-oriented
GNU/Linux distribution which incorporates ZFS is at
<ftp://gdo-lc.ucllnl.org/pub/projects/chaos/5.1/SRPMS/>.  (I don't know
if the RHEL7-derived one is published.)  There's another from a US lab
that you may have heard of
<http://ftp2.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/>.

There is a distribution of Linux by a US corporation with CDDL modules
<http://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL7/UEKR3/x86_64/index_src.html>
for their general purpose GNU/Linux distribution.

>> Please do some research before actually saying things
>
> likely i did much more research than you can even imagine long before
> that thread started

At least knowing about LLNL when sounding off about ZFS could stop
someone looking foolish.
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Neal Gompa]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 6:54 PM, Stephen John Smoogen <smo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 14 January 2016 at 12:20, Neal Gompa <ngomp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 2:14 PM, Reindl Harald <h.rei...@thelounge.net> 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Am 14.01.2016 um 19:57 schrieb Gerald B. Cox:
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Bill Nottingham <nott...@splat.cc
>>>> <mailto:nott...@splat.cc>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> As a rule, I try not to take legal licensing interpretations from a
>>>> CTO
>>>> who's trying to sell me the thing they're talking about the
>>>> licensing of.
>>>>
>>>> We certainly could send that interpretation of CDDL/GPL and the
>>>> kernel to the
>>>> legal team... but I'm not sure they'd agree with it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Well, if Lawrence Livermore is doing it, and Canonical apparently plans
>>>> to do it, it probably would be a good idea to get a determination from
>>>> the legal team
>>>
>>>
>>> who is "Lawrence Livermore"?
>>>
>>
>> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is an organization founded by
>> the University of California to do research and development for
>> academic and government purposes. The US Department of Energy
>> commissioned them to port ZFS to Linux quite a long time ago[0], which
>> is the foundation of the current ZFS on Linux codebase.
>>
>> Please do some research before actually saying things.
>>
>
> Might be good if you did also :).
>
> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a US Government/Department
> of Energy laboratory that UC Berkeley has a hand in managing. It was
> not founded by the University of California but came out of the post
> Manhatten project to build the hydrogen bomb. The US DOE did not
> commission the lab to make the port. The port was done as part of a
> project to have a large scale filesystem work for certain computer
> clusters. That work got special permission from Sun but those
> permissions look to be sealed.
>
> Just because a port was done and then released does not mean that
> Lawrence Livermore is using it in any large way etc. There are
> thousands of projects that come out of these labs which maybe 3-20
> students, grad students and phd's worked on but aren't in any use.
> Most of them will get that file attached to them which doesn't mean
> that LLNL sactioned it, DOE commission it etc etc. It just means that
> it was done at the lab as part of some project and the law requires
> that the file is attached to it.
>

LLNL is still actively involved in the ZFS on Linux project, so they
are still doing something with it.



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Re: ZFS on linux

[Bill Nottingham]

Gerald B. Cox (gb...@bzb.us) said: 
> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 9:25 AM, Stephen John Smoogen <smo...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> >
> > Here is a simple if then for figuring out how ZFS support may ever get
> > into Fedora:
> 
> 
> I originally believed it was simply a licensing issue that was preventing
> the inclusion in Fedora, but apparently that isn't true:
> http://warpmech.com/?news=myth-busting-series-zfs-on-linux-has-license-problems

As a rule, I try not to take legal licensing interpretations from a CTO
who's trying to sell me the thing they're talking about the licensing of.

We certainly could send that interpretation of CDDL/GPL and the kernel to the
legal team... but I'm not sure they'd agree with it.

Bill
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Reindl Harald]

Am 14.01.2016 um 20:20 schrieb Neal Gompa:

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 2:14 PM, Reindl Harald <h.rei...@thelounge.net> wrote:


Am 14.01.2016 um 19:57 schrieb Gerald B. Cox:


On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Bill Nottingham <nott...@splat.cc
<mailto:nott...@splat.cc>> wrote:

 As a rule, I try not to take legal licensing interpretations from a
CTO
 who's trying to sell me the thing they're talking about the
 licensing of.

 We certainly could send that interpretation of CDDL/GPL and the
 kernel to the
 legal team... but I'm not sure they'd agree with it.

Well, if Lawrence Livermore is doing it, and Canonical apparently plans
to do it, it probably would be a good idea to get a determination from
the legal team


who is "Lawrence Livermore"?


Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is an organization founded by
the University of California to do research and development for
academic and government purposes. The US Department of Energy
commissioned them to port ZFS to Linux quite a long time ago[0], which
is the foundation of the current ZFS on Linux codebase.


and they build a large, genral purpose, linux distribution?


Please do some research before actually saying things


likely i did much more research than you can even imagine long before 
that thread started


CDDL is incompatible with GPLv2 - period



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Re: ZFS on linux

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Thu, 2016-01-14 at 20:24 +0100, Reindl Harald wrote:
> likely i did much more research than you can even imagine long
> before 
> that thread started

I find this challenging to believe.

> CDDL is incompatible with GPLv2 - period

Did you read the web site at all? The argument is that it can be used
as a kernel module without constituting a derived work. Many developers
believe this is not a GPL violation. Many believe otherwise. This is a
well-known, open controversy. It's to be expected that different sets
of lawyers will have different opinions on the risk depending on
business requirements and their company's risk profile.

Michael
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Gerald B. Cox]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 9:25 AM, Stephen John Smoogen <smo...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> Here is a simple if then for figuring out how ZFS support may ever get
> into Fedora:


I originally believed it was simply a licensing issue that was preventing
the inclusion in Fedora, but apparently that isn't true:
http://warpmech.com/?news=myth-busting-series-zfs-on-linux-has-license-problems
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Gerald B. Cox]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Bill Nottingham  wrote:

> As a rule, I try not to take legal licensing interpretations from a CTO
> who's trying to sell me the thing they're talking about the licensing of.
>
> We certainly could send that interpretation of CDDL/GPL and the kernel to
> the
> legal team... but I'm not sure they'd agree with it.
>

Well, if Lawrence Livermore is doing it, and Canonical apparently plans to
do it, it probably would be a good idea to get a determination from the
legal team.  I don't care one way or another, I use BTRFS - but we
shouldn't be saying there are license issues if there aren't.
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Reindl Harald]

Am 14.01.2016 um 19:57 schrieb Gerald B. Cox:

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Bill Nottingham > wrote:

As a rule, I try not to take legal licensing interpretations from a CTO
who's trying to sell me the thing they're talking about the
licensing of.

We certainly could send that interpretation of CDDL/GPL and the
kernel to the
legal team... but I'm not sure they'd agree with it.


Well, if Lawrence Livermore is doing it, and Canonical apparently plans
to do it, it probably would be a good idea to get a determination from
the legal team


who is "Lawrence Livermore"?

is Canonical located in the US? no!
is Redhat located in the US? yes!
you see the difference?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License

ZFS cannot be included in the GPL-licensed Linux kernel, because it is 
licensed under the GPL-incompatible CDDL


PERIOD



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Re: ZFS on linux

[Reindl Harald]

Am 14.01.2016 um 20:15 schrieb Gerald B. Cox:


On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:57 AM, Gerald B. Cox > wrote:

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Bill Nottingham > wrote:

As a rule, I try not to take legal licensing interpretations
from a CTO
who's trying to sell me the thing they're talking about the
licensing of.

We certainly could send that interpretation of CDDL/GPL and the
kernel to the
legal team... but I'm not sure they'd agree with it.

Well, if Lawrence Livermore is doing it, and Canonical apparently
plans to do it, it probably would be a good idea to get a
determination from the legal team.  I don't care one way or another,
I use BTRFS - but we shouldn't be saying there are license issues if
there aren't.

I also found this: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ZFS
ZFS is licensed under the CDDL , a
popular and widely used OSI-approved open source license
, that is recognized by the FSF
 as a free software
license, but is incompatible with the GNU GPL. Because of that ZFS
cannot be added to the Linux kernel directly. It can, however, be
distributed as a DKMS package separate from the main kernel package


oh yeah - bring a DKMS package out of tree *for your filesystems* in the 
mix and wait for bugreports of users in trouble


do it at your own - but don't expect it a good idea for a general 
purpose distribution and *no* "but others do" is no valid justification




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Re: ZFS on linux

[Gerald B. Cox]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 11:14 AM, Reindl Harald 
wrote:

>
> ZFS cannot be included in the GPL-licensed Linux kernel, because it is
> licensed under the GPL-incompatible CDDL


Harald, you missed the point.  We all understand it cannot be included in
the kernel - we're talking about whether or not it can be included in the
distribution.  Fedora already includes software that has incompatible GPL
licenses...
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses

In fact, the CDDL is an approved Fedora license:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main?rd=Licensing

Just because something is incompatible with the GPL doesn't in and of
itself blacklist it from being included in the distribution.
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Reindl Harald]

Am 14.01.2016 um 20:34 schrieb Gerald B. Cox:


On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 11:14 AM, Reindl Harald > wrote:


ZFS cannot be included in the GPL-licensed Linux kernel, because it
is licensed under the GPL-incompatible CDDL


Harald, you missed the point


you missed the point


We all understand it cannot be included
in the kernel - we're talking about whether or not it can be included in
the distribution.  Fedora already includes software that has
incompatible GPL licenses...


but you don't understand "derived work" which affects kernel modules


https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses

In fact, the CDDL is an approved Fedora license:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main?rd=Licensing


a standalone software with CDDL is a different topic


Just because something is incompatible with the GPL doesn't in and of
itself blacklist it from being included in the distribution


no, but when you link that incompatible code with the kernel which is 
GPLv2 code it's a complete different topic


for "out of tree kernel modules" just read the other thread



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Re: ZFS on linux

[Reindl Harald]

Am 14.01.2016 um 19:45 schrieb Bill Nottingham:

Bill, your maildomain is burned and the only reason that your mails 
appear here is there the mailing list is whitelisted based on SPF


1.5
URIBL_SBL_A Contains URL's A record listed in the
SBL blocklist [URIs: splat.cc]  

1.5
URIBL_SBL Contains an URL's NS
IP listed in the SBL blocklist  [URIs: splat.cc]

7.0 URIBL_BLACK
Contains an URL listed in the URIBL blacklist   
[URIs: splat.cc]

-100 USER_IN_SPF_WHITELIST From: address is in the user's SPF whitelist



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Re: ZFS on linux

[Chris Murphy]

I think someone needs to agree to become the maintainer for such a
package, correct? Who's willing to do this?

I haven't tested ZoL on my UEFI+Secure Boot NUC yet, but my
expectation is that this kernel module isn't going to be signed by
anything trusted, so it'd fail to load. If that's true, there's an
advantage for building it within Fedora infrastructure if it's going
to get built with a Fedora signing key. But the kernel module private
key used for signing isn't kept around for building other modules (it
goes back to the ether).

And if that can't or won't happen, is there a problem with the way
it's package by the zfsonlinux.org folks now? They have a Fedora
specific repo.

Anyway, it all sounds non-trivial. It's going to take a plan.


Chris Murphy
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Josh Boyer]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 5:29 PM, Neal Gompa  wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Zach Villers  wrote:
>> Well - If there was to be a plan, it would have to start with RH legal
>> making that determination would it not?
>>
>> Could FESCO or the other council (sorry it escapes me ATM) take this up as a
>> meeting item? Is it worth presenting for a legal determination?

You can contact le...@lists.fedoraproject.org with legal questions
independently of any FESCo/Council items.

> There are two councils that matter: the Fedora Council[0] and the
> Fedora Engineering Steering Committee[1]. Both of these will likely
> have a say in this matter.
>
>> In my mind, if it was approved by legal we would have to;
>>
>> A - determine with we were going to start building a kernel with nodebug
>> turned off AND if it needs to be maintained as a separate kernel package to
>> make sure that the kernel version tracked is supported by ZFS.
>
> This should not be necessary, as our kernel is very close to mainline,
> making it quite easy for kmod authors to target.
>
>> B - Be prepared to support a filesystem that needs modules build by DKMS
>
> This shouldn't be too terrible, as most of the userspace would treat
> it like any other filesystem.

Except for that whole other thread you started where I laid out why we
said we aren't going to do kmods as a deliverable from the Fedora
project.  If one wants to start this in a separate repo, that's up to
them.

>> C - Find maintainers ( I would volunteer - I'd have to learn packaging)
>
> I'd certainly be willing to assist if it were allowed.

I will be honest and say I do not foresee this being allowed in an
official capacity.  People are better off using the existing ZFS repo
or contacting rpmfusion about it.

To be clear, maintainers would need to be willing to deal with any and
all kernel issues reported with ZFS loaded.  We cannot staff the
existing "next-generation" filesystem that is already upstream, let
alone another that never will be.

Also, willing maintainers should be item A :).

>> D - Plan what release/testing, etc
>
> Again, definitely willing to help out here.
>
>> E - Decide if it when/if it would be supported in the installer and make
>> those changes as well
>
> I would hope that Anaconda would grow support for it if we did have it.
>
>> F - do other stuff...
>>
>
> What else do you think would need to happen?
>
>> Should this be presented on another list?
>>
>
> I think all the relevant stakeholders are present on this list. *If*
> this goes anywhere,

Being transparent, I don't see this making it past legal.  On the very
off chance it did, I don't see it making it past some of the other
policy and technical hurdles we have.

> then we would make a proposal to the Fedora
> Packaging Committee[2] for a policy change.

A change for what?  Allowing kmods in Fedora?  DKMS itself is already
provided, but we do not provide binary kmods themselves.  I've already
explained why in the other thread.  Or do you somehow mean shipping
module source that is then built on user's systems?  That seems...
fragile at best.

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Re: ZFS on linux

[Simon Farnsworth]

> On 14 Jan 2016, at 11:39, Neal Gompa  wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 2:35 PM, Michael Catanzaro  
> wrote:
>> On Thu, 2016-01-14 at 20:24 +0100, Reindl Harald wrote:
>>> likely i did much more research than you can even imagine long
>>> before
>>> that thread started
>> 
>> I find this challenging to believe.
>> 
>>> CDDL is incompatible with GPLv2 - period
>> 
>> Did you read the web site at all? The argument is that it can be used
>> as a kernel module without constituting a derived work. Many developers
>> believe this is not a GPL violation. Many believe otherwise. This is a
>> well-known, open controversy. It's to be expected that different sets
>> of lawyers will have different opinions on the risk depending on
>> business requirements and their company's risk profile.
>> 
>> Michael
> 
> As far as I know, that's why the kernel has symbol export feature to
> indicate which ones are covered by the GPL-ness (GPL_ONLY symbol
> export).
> 
The distinction between EXPORT_SYMBOL and EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL is minimal. The 
theory [1] is that EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL indicates that the kernel community 
believes that EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL symbols are so core to Linux that you cannot 
use them without creating a derived work under copyright law. Thus using an 
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL symbol from a GPL-incompatible module is deliberate 
infringement, with all that that implies in terms of the legal system; using an 
EXPORT_SYMBOL symbol from a GPL-incompatible module *might* be non-infringing 
(if the work using it is legally separate in terms of copyright law), or might 
be accidental infringement (if you didn't realise what you were doing carried 
legal risk).

In all cases, you need to talk to your copyright expert lawyer about 
distributing GPL-incompatible modules for the Linux kernel. Copyright law has 
some sharp edges, and you can get hurt if you ignore them; for Fedora, Red Hat 
Inc take on that liability, and they'll not want to do anything that puts them 
at risk of harm.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/154602/

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Re: ZFS on linux

[Gerald B. Cox]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:57 AM, Gerald B. Cox  wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Bill Nottingham 
> wrote:
>
>> As a rule, I try not to take legal licensing interpretations from a CTO
>> who's trying to sell me the thing they're talking about the licensing of.
>>
>> We certainly could send that interpretation of CDDL/GPL and the kernel to
>> the
>> legal team... but I'm not sure they'd agree with it.
>>
>
> Well, if Lawrence Livermore is doing it, and Canonical apparently plans to
> do it, it probably would be a good idea to get a determination from the
> legal team.  I don't care one way or another, I use BTRFS - but we
> shouldn't be saying there are license issues if there aren't.


I also found this:  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ZFS
ZFS is licensed under the CDDL , a
popular and widely used OSI-approved open source license
, that is recognized by the FSF
 as a free software
license, but is incompatible with the GNU GPL. Because of that ZFS cannot
be added to the Linux kernel directly. It can, however, be distributed as a
DKMS package separate from the main kernel package.
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Neal Gompa]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 2:14 PM, Reindl Harald <h.rei...@thelounge.net> wrote:
>
>
> Am 14.01.2016 um 19:57 schrieb Gerald B. Cox:
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Bill Nottingham <nott...@splat.cc
>> <mailto:nott...@splat.cc>> wrote:
>>
>> As a rule, I try not to take legal licensing interpretations from a
>> CTO
>> who's trying to sell me the thing they're talking about the
>> licensing of.
>>
>> We certainly could send that interpretation of CDDL/GPL and the
>> kernel to the
>> legal team... but I'm not sure they'd agree with it.
>>
>>
>> Well, if Lawrence Livermore is doing it, and Canonical apparently plans
>> to do it, it probably would be a good idea to get a determination from
>> the legal team
>
>
> who is "Lawrence Livermore"?
>

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is an organization founded by
the University of California to do research and development for
academic and government purposes. The US Department of Energy
commissioned them to port ZFS to Linux quite a long time ago[0], which
is the foundation of the current ZFS on Linux codebase.

Please do some research before actually saying things.

[0]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/master/DISCLAIMER

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Re: ZFS on linux

[Reindl Harald]

Am 14.01.2016 um 20:35 schrieb Michael Catanzaro:

On Thu, 2016-01-14 at 20:24 +0100, Reindl Harald wrote:

likely i did much more research than you can even imagine long
before
that thread started


I find this challenging to believe.


i don't care what you believe


CDDL is incompatible with GPLv2 - period


Did you read the web site at all? The argument is that it can be used
as a kernel module without constituting a derived work. Many developers
believe this is not a GPL violation. Many believe otherwise. This is a
well-known, open controversy. It's to be expected that different sets
of lawyers will have different opinions on the risk depending on
business requirements and their company's risk profile.


and Redhat legal decided against
now you!



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Re: ZFS on linux

[Neal Gompa]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 2:35 PM, Michael Catanzaro  wrote:
> On Thu, 2016-01-14 at 20:24 +0100, Reindl Harald wrote:
>> likely i did much more research than you can even imagine long
>> before
>> that thread started
>
> I find this challenging to believe.
>
>> CDDL is incompatible with GPLv2 - period
>
> Did you read the web site at all? The argument is that it can be used
> as a kernel module without constituting a derived work. Many developers
> believe this is not a GPL violation. Many believe otherwise. This is a
> well-known, open controversy. It's to be expected that different sets
> of lawyers will have different opinions on the risk depending on
> business requirements and their company's risk profile.
>
> Michael

As far as I know, that's why the kernel has symbol export feature to
indicate which ones are covered by the GPL-ness (GPL_ONLY symbol
export).



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Re: ZFS on linux

[Florian Weimer]

On 01/14/2016 03:26 PM, Zach Villers wrote:
> Now that Debian has added zfs support to their experimental branch;
> https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/zfs-linux_0.6.4.2-1.html

I don't know where you got this information.  If a package is in NEW, it
is not yet part of Debian.  In fact, it means that ftpmaster review
(which includes both licensing and technical reviews) is still pending.
 This query confirms that there is no zfs-linux source package in Debian:

<https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=default=all=any=sourcenames=zfs-linux>

Any Debian developer can upload packages to the NEW queue.  This does
not mean they end up in the distribution.

Florian
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Zach Villers]

Well - If there was to be a plan, it would have to start with RH legal
making that determination would it not?

Could FESCO or the other council (sorry it escapes me ATM) take this up as
a meeting item? Is it worth presenting for a legal determination?

In my mind, if it was approved by legal we would have to;

A - determine with we were going to start building a kernel with nodebug
turned off AND if it needs to be maintained as a separate kernel package to
make sure that the kernel version tracked is supported by ZFS.
B - Be prepared to support a filesystem that needs modules build by DKMS
C - Find maintainers ( I would volunteer - I'd have to learn packaging)
D - Plan what release/testing, etc
E - Decide if it when/if it would be supported in the installer and make
those changes as well
F - do other stuff...

Should this be presented on another list?

Good Discussion all...

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 3:37 PM, Simon Farnsworth 
wrote:

>
> > On 14 Jan 2016, at 11:39, Neal Gompa  wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 2:35 PM, Michael Catanzaro 
> wrote:
> >> On Thu, 2016-01-14 at 20:24 +0100, Reindl Harald wrote:
> >>> likely i did much more research than you can even imagine long
> >>> before
> >>> that thread started
> >>
> >> I find this challenging to believe.
> >>
> >>> CDDL is incompatible with GPLv2 - period
> >>
> >> Did you read the web site at all? The argument is that it can be used
> >> as a kernel module without constituting a derived work. Many developers
> >> believe this is not a GPL violation. Many believe otherwise. This is a
> >> well-known, open controversy. It's to be expected that different sets
> >> of lawyers will have different opinions on the risk depending on
> >> business requirements and their company's risk profile.
> >>
> >> Michael
> >
> > As far as I know, that's why the kernel has symbol export feature to
> > indicate which ones are covered by the GPL-ness (GPL_ONLY symbol
> > export).
> >
> The distinction between EXPORT_SYMBOL and EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL is minimal.
> The theory [1] is that EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL indicates that the kernel
> community believes that EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL symbols are so core to Linux that
> you cannot use them without creating a derived work under copyright law.
> Thus using an EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL symbol from a GPL-incompatible module is
> deliberate infringement, with all that that implies in terms of the legal
> system; using an EXPORT_SYMBOL symbol from a GPL-incompatible module
> *might* be non-infringing (if the work using it is legally separate in
> terms of copyright law), or might be accidental infringement (if you didn't
> realise what you were doing carried legal risk).
>
> In all cases, you need to talk to your copyright expert lawyer about
> distributing GPL-incompatible modules for the Linux kernel. Copyright law
> has some sharp edges, and you can get hurt if you ignore them; for Fedora,
> Red Hat Inc take on that liability, and they'll not want to do anything
> that puts them at risk of harm.
>
> [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/154602/
>
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Dave Love]

Zach Villers  writes:

> I understand. My thought was, that there seems to be a push to add support
> in Debian and Ubuntu. Would it now be possible/make sense to create maybe a
> nodebug kernel package based on a stable kernel supported by ZFS and
> zfs/spl packages maybe even as a copr repo?

What's wrong with the zfsonlinux repo?  I don't run Fedora, but it seems
OK on RHEL6.
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Re: ZFS on linux

[Chuck Anderson]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 05:07:57PM -0500, Zach Villers wrote:
> A - determine with we were going to start building a kernel with nodebug
> turned off

Why?
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