FSF Issues Fresh Statement Over ZFS On Linux With GPL Enforcement

[anda_skoa]

FSF is a communist parasite organisation. If everyone just used BSD and MIT, there would be no problems with licensing ever. Also those licenses would give the developer better skills and higher moral. GPL is great if you want to fail and deal with toenail eating communists.

Hehe, nice parody!
Now and then it is good to remember how unskilled and primitive the 20th-century anti-copyleft trolls were

Cheers,
_

[Ardje]

I dunno who came up with the "you can't put GPL in the Apple App store", but I think that's a technicality rather than most developers' intentions.

It was in apple's developer FAQ that you cannot put GPL'd software into the app store, and you had to explicitly agree with it.
There was something unfree in the license terms of the app store/sdk for the app store that made it incompatible. I don't know if that's still the case but that was the case 4 or 5 years ago.

[Ardje]

True, but I think iOS can handle shared libraries, no?

There was a clause that forbid you to use third party libraries or depend on it. You were allowed to only upload one complete package.

[anda_skoa]

There was a clause that forbid you to use third party libraries or depend on it. You were allowed to only upload one complete package.

Ok, but that doesn't mean you cannot have shared libraries inside your package, right?

Cheers,
_

[Ardje]

So if I choose the GPL as my license for my code my opinion counts less that that of the FSF? Sorry but wtf?

Well, if you license code you are at liberty to do anything with it. If you distribute your code with a GPL license nobody else will be able to steal the rights away you originally intended the user has.
Since the FSF has crafted the GPL legally they know the ins and outs of that license. If you license your code under GPL to someone, you are still the copyright owner, you have to enforce it if you want, and the FSF knows exactly how that works, and if someone steals your code (use it in a way you don't like) you can ask the FSF how to enforce it or if you accidentally permitted that usage. You are not a lawyer, the FSF has a lot of good lawyers that get paid to know this.
You are free to choose any or multiple license of your liking for your distribution.
The case with linux is that linus has only written a small portion of what currently is linux, and he does not demand others to give up their rights to the code. Some projects do, but linus doesn't.
The result is that linux contains code from a lot of people and companies, and they all have their respective copyrights on it, but it all is licensed under GPL v2.

For me it will always be GPL v2 or higher for base or infrastructure software, something proprietary for upper level software, and I guess dual licensed BSD/GPL for hardware.
That way I can satisfy all my customers.

[Ardje]

Ok, but that doesn't mean you cannot have shared libraries inside your package, right?

I'm not sure. The wording was from 4/5 years ago (or longer) when I cared. A lot of forced development in my environment for ipads/phones because android would never make it, and ios will be on top. Even when at that time it was already not the case anymore.
I've since not ever looked at it anymore. I think the Doom_Oo7 replies are much better reflecting current status. So please forgive me my dusted comments.

[trek]

GPL is great if you want to fail and deal with toenail eating communists.

fail exactly as Linux "failed"

[pgoetz]

At the end of day, ZFS is hardly going to be mainlined anyway: way too foreign and intrusive entity, which does not uses Linux features and does not provides integration with rest of system. Btrfs barely made it with plenty of uproar, Mason had hard time justifying all his stuff. This thing would likely get dozen and half of middle fingers of Linux kernel devs, any day.

Sounds like you don't know much about the advantages of using ZFS. On demand, zero cost snapshotting is a game changer. The ability to group different storage devices into a single logical pool of storage is another. The list goes on. ZFS solves an awful lot of systems administration problems that are way more complicated to solve without ZFS.

[Mystro256]

So if I choose the GPL as my license for my code my opinion counts less that that of the FSF? Sorry but wtf?

You can change a license of your work if you so please, but if you say your program is "GPL" it will abide by the terms that the FSF set. If you don't like the terms, re-license your program to something else... but as long as it's licensed as GPL without exception, the GPL authors have the right to enforce it as they like.

I personally prefer using "GPL 2 or Later" for my licensing, that way my code is licensed with GPL2, which i prefer over GPL3, but is still available for anyone who wants to use it with GPL3 licensed code.

[gbcox]

This is wrong understanding. Linux and GPLv2 were before Sun chosen CDDL, therefore it is Sun to blame. It seems it has been intentional. Ok, its up to Sun, one can always try some bizarre license to thwart others, after all.

I agree that Sun purposely created this situation - but that wasn't my point. Some people seem to think that Oracle can sue... that is not correct. The CDDL isn't being violated, it is the GPL.