Tom Haynes wrote:
> Phillip,
> 
> You raise valid concerns - and we certainly do not want to abuse your 
> copyright. Even if
> the project had been approved, the copyright issues would have to have 
> been resolved
> before we took the code in.
> 

OK, that makes me a lot happier :) My major concern in sending the email
was to ensure everything was done right.  Handled correctly I think
Squashfs on OpenSolaris would be a boost for Squashfs, OpenSolaris, and
everyone involved.  Handled badly it could end up in the nightmare
scenario of a forked project, nasty and subtle incompatibilities,
and mutual loathing between the projects, as has happened all too often
in the past :)

> Could I get you to answer a different question? Would you be interested 
> in a leading
> a project to port Squashfs to OpenSolaris? Are the technical challenges 
> interesting?
> 

Yes, and I think the technical challenges could be interesting.  My
reticence would be complete lack of knowledge of the Solaris VFS
interface.  I don't believe reading the original papers on the Sun
VFS interface in the late 80s counts (that would have been SunOS, not
Solaris anyway)...


> And if you did so, would you explore the licensing issues?
> 

Yes, I would.  The issue is less a case of "throwing my toys out
of the pram" because I only want to license under the GPL, but
more the serious issue that the Squashfs kernel code doesn't make
a distinction between core Squashfs filesystem code and Linux
VFS interfacing code.  Due to this at the moment the whole lot counts
as a derived work of the Linux kernel, and so must be licensed
under the GPL.

At the moment to license under CDDL I would have to split the
code into two parts, a Squashfs filesystem core, and a Linux
VFS interface wrapper.   The alternative which may take less
work is to base the code on Unsquashfs, which is a separate
independent implementation which isn't derived from anything.

I'll have to study the code and think about the options.

Rergards

Phillip


> Thanks,
> Tom
> 

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