SFC Considers Combining ZFS With Linux A GPL Violation

[liam]

I've got the regular view of Capitalism, shared by millions of people.
The FSF and its affiliates are no different from anti-GMO/anti-vaccine snake oil salesmen trying to push their product by making up BS conspiracy theories about the "system", claiming to fight the status quo when, in actuality, they're actively exploiting it.

You may very well, but that's not the correct view of it (capitalism is inherently about the control of the means of production by PRIVATE entities)
If you must compare the GPL to any economic system then socialism is the better choice.
I don't understand what the rest of your post is trying to say.

[liam]

So a closed-source kernel driver with private copyright license is compatible with the GPL, but ZFS isn't?

I know you're not a lawyer but at least try to make sense.

Or anybody here, explain to me how any typical Android device out there is compliant but Canonical's approach with ZFS isn't? I just want to understand the difference.

I'm not sure I said that.
My understanding is that drivers which user the kernel interfaces are considered derived works, hence the GPL should apply.
However, this is beside the point with regards to cddl/GPL compatibility.
Regarding Android, my opinion is that there are many, many devices out there which are in violation of the GPL.

[MoonMoon]

Those are your words, you can take responsibility for yourself. Your only tactics is to make shit up.

Bold words from someone that lies to his customers to sell more hardware.

[W.Irrkopf]

You're misunderstanding what I'm saying.
[...]
It's hard to get anybody in the Linux community spun up about the billion+ violating Android devices out there. But anytime ZFS comes into play, which is peanuts in comparison, the talk is all about GPL violations.

You are right, I did misunderstand what you were saying - it makes much more sense this way. Maybe people don't care too much about Y AGV (yet another Android GPL violation) because there isn't much loss for the community: Another SoC using a variation of existing hardware doesn't look very relevant in the medium to long term - usually that hardware will be obsolete within 2 years, so the Copyright owners don't seem to care that much. The issue with ZFS and the Nvidia drivers is, that they are of much greater general interest and thus are more likely to get Copyright owners to take action.

"Unrelated": Why are so many people bashing the SFC? That's like shooting the messenger. They have stated that in their opinion, distributing zfs.ko will be a license violation and they provided a detailed reasoning why they think so. Just like Ubuntu (well Canonical) stated their opinion although with less detailed arguments. They have not stated that they intend to sue or anything.

[bridgman]

"Unrelated": Why are so many people bashing the SFC? That's like shooting the messenger. They have stated that in their opinion, distributing zfs.ko will be a license violation and they provided a detailed reasoning why they think so. Just like Ubuntu (well Canonical) stated their opinion although with less detailed arguments. They have not stated that they intend to sue or anything.

Shooting the messenger is the traditional response to being told something you don't want to hear.

[Bronek]

Of course it is : https://packages.debian.org/sid/nvidia-kernel-source

You realize that is not actual nVidia driver source ? Download the .deb file and look inside - among other things, it contains 11MB large binary blob called nv-kernel-amd64.o_shipped . That is the actual driver, and it is most definitely not distributed in source form.

[Bronek]

My understanding is that drivers which user the kernel interfaces are considered derived works, hence the GPL should apply.

Right, however OpenZFS on Linux does not use Linux kernel interfaces. Its authors went to considerable lengths to avoid using them, they only use standard interfaces i.e. EXPORT_SYMBOL . For any work which requires use of actual Linux interfaces they employ user mode binaries, with possibly addition of additional kernel code licensed under GPL .

[duby229]

Bold words from someone that lies to his customers to sell more hardware.

You never met me once Who' the liar now?

[erendorn]

Yes it does. The whole point it that a user will ALWAYS have access to the code so you can fix/improve (or get someone with the knowledge) the software you are using. Look up the old story about Stallman getting frustrated with broken printer drivers.

So now in hurd you have no drivers. No frustration!

The biggest fallacy in the GPL mindset is that people assume that corporation will publish their code in GPL to use GPL libs, whereas in practice they just rewrite the whole stuff in proprietary or with BSD libraries.

[SystemCrasher]

So now in hurd you have no drivers. No frustration!

GPL could give a boost. But it not to be taken as something granted. Poor project management could negate benefits it could bring.

The biggest fallacy in the GPL mindset is that people assume that corporation will publish their code in GPL to use GPL libs, whereas in practice they just rewrite the whole stuff in proprietary or with BSD libraries.

Seriously? Just take a look who contributes to Linux. What? Like two thirds of commits are coming from corporations? Seems it works. Somehow BSDs never got nowhere close to Linux in terms of hardware support. E.g. these days many companies are commiting their HW support right into mainline. This is especially noticeable when it comes to "mobile" SoCs, virtually unsupported by BSDs alltogether. OTOH LInux got quite a strong traction and quite many vendors prefer to commit HW support mainline these days. Sure, not each and every vendor yet got this idea, but overall it makes DRASTIC difference compared to BSDs.

Catch with BSDs is: when company improves something, they often close it and never commit it back, because license permits this kind of attitude. On global scale it thwarts pace of development of upstream projects. GPL makes this rather pointless, and as we can see on Linux example, it can eventually turn project into a powerhouse. Somehow it never worked like this for BSDs, which were always like a bastard son of proprietary OSes :P. Some unusable second-rate stuff, well below of proprietary counterparts. Linux isn't like this. There are no first-class and second class citizens. It makes Linux usage far more fun to my taste, it is not hard to make it a commercial-quality entity, it takes orders of magnitude less eforts compared to BSDs :P. So I do not have to be whole Sony Corp to make some money using Linux as boilerplate tech...