On May 6, 2008, at 12:54, eric kustarz wrote: > Some of it has already been done: > http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/grub/ > grub-0.95/stage2/zfs-include/uberblock_impl.h
That file says 'Copyright 2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc.', though, so Sun has the rights to do this. But being GPLv2 code, why do I have any patent rights to include/redistribute that grub code in my (theoretical) product (let's assume it does something that is covered by one of the ZFS patents)? GPLv3 makes this issue go away, but grub is v2 so it's still there. AFAIK, Sun hasn't granted me any patent rights to ZFS other than through the CDDL. (Though I'd love to be wrong on this). The problem, as I understand it, is that Sun currently licenses the patents only under the terms of the CDDL. It looks like Section 2.1.d, probably. So, as long as I'm working in the CDDL I get all the patent protections I'd ever need from Sun. But if I (for the sake of argument) were to re-implement ZFS, not under CDDL, by what grant has Sun offered me a patent license? The grants in the CDDL only apply to works distributed under the terms of the CDDL, as I read it. From skimming the porting paper, it looks like the BSD port uses the CDDL code directly and so doesn't have to worry about this. I assume Mac OS X does too? I'm sure this has been hashed before, but my search keywords are apparently sub-par. -Bill ----- Bill McGonigle, Owner Work: 603.448.4440 BFC Computing, LLC Home: 603.448.1668 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cell: 603.252.2606 http://www.bfccomputing.com/ Page: 603.442.1833 Blog: http://blog.bfccomputing.com/ VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
