Hi,
I'm the author and maintainer of the Squashfs project. I have been expecting someone to make a proposal to port Squashfs to another operating system for a number of years. I'm pleased that it has now happened, and in principle I'm interested in cooperating and supporting any such efforts. The proposer tried to get into contact with me a couple of weeks ago, but I left his email unanswered because I found it to be somewhat arrogant and peremptory in tone. The short email stated "The main problem is that your code is licensed under the GPL, and the OpenSolaris' code is under CDDL". Additionally, it went on to state "Of course, we'll have to rewrite a lot of code from scratch in order to integrate SquashFS into the Solaris VFS layer. But it may be handy to be authorized to reuse some of you GPL code.". In essence the proposer simultaneously managed to dismiss and trivialise over five years of work on Squashfs, while at the same time indirectly request a change of licence to CDDL without bothering to make a case as why I might be interested in doing so. I'm left in a quandary, do I support this proposal and consider relicensing some of my code to the CDDL? Obviously, unless I give my assent, relicensing a port of Squashfs under the CDDL will be an abuse of my copyright. Only a complete reimplementation will avoid this. It would be useful to know what portions of Squashfs would need to be relicensed under the CDDL. I'm assuming CDDL only relates to the kernel and not user-space utilities (like Mksquashfs and Unsquashfs). The other thing which worries me about the proposal is that there is no provision for any formal or informal involvement from myself. I would hope to be at least consulted on any technical issues relating to the filesystem layout itself, to ensure the port can correctly mount all Squashfs filesystems. Suggestions and comments welcomed. Regards Phillip Lougher _______________________________________________ storage-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/storage-discuss
