ZFS, while GPL incompatible, is still free software. It is one of those
technologies that has kept people tied to the BSDs and while other file
systems like btrfs have tried, ZFS is still king.
The only problem? It cannot be merged into the mainline kernel due to
conflicts with the GPL. We all know this.
Canonical makes a good chunk of their money from trademark and service
contracts. If they put in the effort to include ZFS support, it will keep
people on Ubuntu (and GNU/Linux in general) instead of merging to one of the
BSDs.
I think there is some misinterpretation here. The actual kernel is as-is and
will not need any deblobbing. Fully GPL compatible and all that. The only
difference with ZFS on Ubuntu is the addition of the zfsutils-linux package
at http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/zfsutils-linux that will install the
driver as an addon. It is probably a DKMS package (much like the non-free
Nvidia drivers and VirtualBox) meaning that it will not affect the shipping
kernel. Canonical just makes it convenient to install the package as an
additional module if you choose so to please.
If the Trisquel team is worried about ZFS, then don't have zfsutils-linux
installed by default. You should still keep it in the repositories due to it
being free software.
