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I know that BSD community was able to port ZFS http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFS into FreeBSD. How come they were able to do it if there are license restrictions? I don't understand how CDDL was compatible with BSD license but not GPL.

Edited 2008-07-25 17:56 UTC

This is entirely a function of the GPL licensing of Linux, and has nothing to do with the licensing of ZFS: Apple is also working on ZFS as well, and there's no conflict there between whatever they're linking to that's proprietary and not released to the general public, and the rest of the code (BSD license, I believe).

Everything in life has a price: in the GPL license, you end up being restricted from using someone else's closed code because of an insistence on license purity, while with MIT/BSD the price you pay is there's no guarantee that you'll get any of the interesting changes, but you can use it (or anyone else) anywhere without a big deal. The question is: what are your goals, and what price are you willing and able to pay, because both licenses may have advantages to you, and also both may have advantages to you, all as a matter of context.

I don't know what you've been drinking but it must be strong!
If ZFS was licensed with BSD 2 clause for example instead of CDDL, then there wouldn't have been any issue with reusing ZFS code inside the Linux kernel.

CDDL is GPL incompatible because Sun wanted to avoid the risk of having their code reused inside the Linux kernel.

The CDDL was written at a time when ~70% of opensource projects are under the GPL, yet it's GPL-incompatible and that's the fault of the GPL?
Bullshit!

You may dislike the GPL, but at least it was written to defend the liberty of the users, the CDDL was written to protect Sun from Free Software competition (Linux), barf!

CDDL is similar to the BSD license, except that it requires the original code to stay opened, while additions can be kept closed.

And why is everyone hailing BSD when it comes integrating external stuff? You GPL freaks are all about code communism, yet steal things from the BSD world and don't and can't give back because of your GPL.

Do you think you're cool or something?


I call BS.
1.) You can't "steal" code from BSD-Projects. Taking the code and get something to work with it is the whole purpose of the license.
2.) Even if it's BSD-code you still can't relicense the code itself.
3.) The GPL REQUIRES you to give the code back. It's your problem if you don't want to use GPL'd code.

But it's always interesting to see that some BSD-fanatics believe that everyone may take the code, modify it and don't give anything back EXCEPT the Linux-people, they are obviously not allowed to use BSD-code.
What a hypocrite.

Now i don't care about your bitch fight over which licens is the best but i must admit that i don't agree with you calling the bsdl camp hypocrites. Yes the bsdl allows people to take the code without giving back but the gpl people tell anyone who care and those who don't aswell that they are about sharing code. Thats all find they should be able to tell that to anyone. But it is kinda weird that they are all for sharing code but yet they have a problem with giving back to diffenrent bsd licensed projects don't you think? Now who's the hypocrite?

But it is kinda weird that they are all for sharing code but yet they have a problem with giving back to diffenrent bsd licensed projects don't you think? Now who's the hypocrite?

problem is, the BSD license ( and BSD licensed projects) actually is about, unidirectional spreading of the code, as wide as possibile - with no contributing back required (of course it's welcome, but it's not mandated)

giving away the code for others to use it and integrate it ( or parts of it) in their own projects (relicensing is also possible) in order to it to be considered the reference implementation of what it represents (be it a specification, an algorithm, or a combination thereof, such as a "unix" variant) is an intended result

and it has to be that way, given the environment the BSD license was born (academic research, whose results were to be openly available)

otoh, the gpl requires code contributions in return - not only that, it requires the code to stay open, thus remaining "free" being protected from those menacing its "freedom"
bu that was meant to satisfy the first requirement of "free software" as a distributed development method ( apart from any social and ethical implication, that is ): to ensure that sw development is done cooperatively among peers, the SW is required to stay "free"

but then that SW is not intended as, and will hardly become, an industry standard reference implementation
closed source developers will have to develop their own (based on the BSD one, maybe), but that is often the goal in this case...

bottom line, given their respective goals and backgrounds, expecting the same from the GPL and the BSD ( or projects using oneof them) is not fair towards either ...

Like the GPL-with-linking-exception license, it's not a new concept! As I said, it's main novelty is that it's GPL-incompatible.

There's also the LGPL which has the same concept but I don't like it as it enforce an artificial distinction between static and dynamic linking.

You should be ashamed of the end of your post..

So when gpl v3 is newer then the cddl it's still the cddl that should change so it would be compatible?



Agree name calling like that doesnt help him to get his point across.

Hello BSD Lovers,

We love BSD and its innovations. But your innovations are taken by someone and grown up but community did not get anything back. Famous example is Netapps, which has taken your wonderfull things, and built empire of storage, but what did you get back. GPL protects innovations and allows other party to complay with that, it is not just write a great piece of stuff by community and some one eat whole piece of cack by modifying it. You not gonna reach what GNU/Linux has reached without protecting code from beasts.

Funny you know GNU/GPL turns beasts into normal mammals.

Appreciate your(BSD) efforts for the growth of Freesoftware.

Interesting remark, note that it's still the GPLv2 which is still (by far) the most widely used license among the free software projects.

But I wonder if it would have been possible to make the GPLv3 compatible with the CDDL?
They did it for the Apache license v2, it was incompatible with the GPLv2 but it isn't with the GPLv3.
I don't know if the FSF even considered to make the GPLv3 compatible with the CDDL and/or MPL.

I don't know what you've been drinking but it must be strong! If ZFS was licensed with BSD 2 clause for example instead of CDDL, then there wouldn't have been any issue with reusing ZFS code inside the Linux kernel. CDDL is GPL incompatible because Sun wanted to avoid the risk of having their code reused inside the Linux kernel. The CDDL was written at a time when ~70% of opensource projects are under the GPL, yet it's GPL-incompatible and that's the fault of the GPL? Bullshit! You may dislike the GPL, but at least it was written to defend the liberty of the users, the CDDL was written to protect Sun from Free Software competition (Linux), barf! "
I think the point is, the CDDL is not incompatible with the GPL, it's the GPL that is incompatible with the CDDL.

And an observation: the CDDL was written to protect Sun from Linux competition (allegedly), but the act of open sourcing their operating system should be considered a great thing by itself.

It seems to me that some people believe that Sun is inherently evil because they didn't choose the GPL. I guess it's a lose-lose situation. If you open up your sources, the community will criticize your license. If you keep your sources closed, the community will criticize your lack of acts that "defend the liberty of the users". Making money is evil, apparently.

Some people will keep whining and whining until they manage to make you go their way or give up and ignore them.

EDIT: Oh, and people seem to think that you can simply copy and paste Solaris code in Linux. Yea, it works just like that. Linux doesn't support RBAC? No problemo, just copy rbac.c over and run make.

Edited 2008-07-25 21:22 UTC

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#GPL

The GNU General Public License

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"I don't understand how CDDL was compatible with BSD license but not GPL."

Not that I understand it all either to be honest, but I am guessing the same reason the BSD license is not compatible with the GPL.

Either you're joking or you're mistaken: there are two BSD license versions: the three clause one or the two clause one, the two clause BSD license is fully compatible with the GPL, the three clause one isn't.

The original BSD license was the three clause one, but now it's the two clause one which is the most widely used (if memory serves NetBSD have recently decided to change their license to the two clause one).

"Either you're joking or you're mistaken: there are two BSD license versions: the three clause one or the two clause one, the two clause BSD license is fully compatible with the GPL, the three clause one isn't."

I was mistaken thinking of the older one. Thanks for clearing it up.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL)

This is a free software license. It has a copyleft with a scope that's similar to the one in the Mozilla Public License, which makes it incompatible with the GNU GPL. This means a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the CDDL cannot legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the CDDL for this reason.

Also unfortunate in the CDDL is its use of the term “intellectual property”
.
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/licensing/cddllicense.txt

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL)

This is a free software license. It has a copyleft with a scope that's similar to the one in the Mozilla Public License, which makes it incompatible with the GNU GPL. This means a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the CDDL cannot legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the CDDL for this reason.

Also unfortunate in the CDDL is its use of the term “intellectual property

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/licensing/cddllicense.txt
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

Are you serious? I was under the impression you are free to use the tools, but when you modify it they expect the changes back. Otherwise ppl using Gimp to retouch their photos could be sued too (if they don't release the photos under GPL).

You are correct. The parent is incorrect. Now, it might be asserted by some that the FSF would *like* to have everything compiled with gcc be GPL'd, but there certainly is no mechanism now in place that requires it nor is there likely to be at any time in the future. It would mean another license change, like happened with GPLv3m but a lot more people would object. This wont happen, but if it were tried you'd know about it, somebody would fork gcc and it would be a non-issue.

? That doesn't make any sense. The GPL is open to everyone. It just says that if you use GPL code then you HAVE to share back.

With BSD, hey don't have to share back, you can use, use, use like Apple and MS. Make Billions and don't have to give anything back.

I think you have that mixed up.

BSD = Open to free loaders.

GPL = Open to anyone that is open back to you.

That is no different then going to work everyday. No one wants to go to work and then not get a pay check.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

FreeBSD Documentation License

This is a permissive non-copyleft free documentation license that is compatible with the GNU FDL.

http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-doc-license.html

Modified BSD license

(Note: on the preceding link, the modified BSD license is listed in the General section.)

This is the original BSD license, modified by removal of the advertising clause. It is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL.

If you want a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, the modified BSD license is a reasonable choice. However, it is risky to recommend use of “the BSD license”, because confusion could easily occur and lead to use of the flawed original BSD license. To avoid this risk, you can suggest the X11 license instead. The X11 license and the revised BSD license are more or less equivalent.

This license is sometimes referred to as the 3-clause BSD license.

http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/COPYRIGHT2.html#5

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GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3

This is the latest version of the GNU GPL: a free software license, and a copyleft license. We recommend it for most software packages.

Please note that GPLv3 is not compatible with GPLv2 by itself. However, most software released under GPLv2 allows you to use the terms of later versions of the GPL as well. When this is the case, you can use the code under GPLv3 to make the desired combination.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2

This is the previous version of the GNU GPL: a free software license, and a copyleft license. We recommend the latest version for most software.

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http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/old-licenses.html#GPL

Old Licenses

This page contains old versions of the licenses published by the Free Software Foundation, kept here for reference. You can find current versions of the licenses on our licenses page

That's just pure FUD.

GCC's GPL covers derived works of GCC, not the programs that are compiled with GCC. The GCC runtime library even has specific exceptions for programs compiled with GCC, though I can't be bothered to provide references to the specific license details. I'll leave that for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception

WPIYF

Here are Daniel's thoughts about HAMMER and porting it to Linux:

http://tux3.org/pipermail/tux3/2008-July/000006.html

And here more, with Matt Dillon's answer and more Daniel's comments:

http://tux3.org/pipermail/tux3/2008-July/000009.html

.

From the mailing list link:

- If we did not have any form of patent, humanity would be better off.

- If we did not have any form of patent, the world economy would benefit. Yes, that means corporations too.

- If we did not have any form of patent, *most voters would benefit* <-- pay close attention to this one

........

What a load of crap.

I haven't thought extensively on patents on physical objects; on the one hand I don't think they are unwarranted, but on the other hand they make me think of situations like this one (from wikipedia on Thomas Tallis):



Point is, the custom of the patent way predates any idea of innovation; here, the Queen thought he was an allright guy, so she did him a little favor. I don't think the basic idea of a government-protected monopoly has changed, just the justification. Is it justified? I don't know.

On the other hand, as a (hack) programmer, I think software patents are ludicrous. Programs are no more than ideas, and what patent officer can tell the difference between an obvious and essential solution, and an "innovative" one? I would argue that the cost of normal developers avoiding patents, in aggregate, offsets any social gain for promoting innovation.

Besides, it is obvious in this business that sales and support are what make fiscal success. Compare IBM and, yes, Netapp, to the great-technology failures of the last two decades: DEC, Next, lisp machines, and on and on. Technology is just a small, small part in the money making puzzle.

Some people think that intellectual property is a bad concept. It's not a load of crap it's based on some sound economic theories. There is some question as to whether or not intellectual property helps or hinders our further development. I remember reading a history of econ essay that spoke of the emergence of market based trademarks and that only later did governments co-opt this function.

http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf

http://danny.oz.au/free-software/advocacy/against_IP.html

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/book-review-7-08.ars