Canonical Talks Up Ubuntu 16.04 LTS With ZFS, LXD

[Mystro256]

I don't think that Canonical needs to be worried about the FSF and SFLC. The silence of Oracle is far more worrisome.

By virtue of Sun being the initial developer and publisher of ZFS under the CDDL, Oracle is now the party which owns the majority of the code in ZFS. Since the CDDL is not GPL compatible and Oracle is simultaneaously a contibutor to the Linux kernel, they are certainly the party with standing to sue Canonical.

After all, Oracle kept ZFS GPL incompatible. They could have ported their code as owner of it to Linux under a GPL compatible license any time and released it as part of Unbreakable Linux. They didn't.

With the inclusion of ZFS (under a dubious legal theory) Canonical cuts into Oracle's Solaris market. I wouldn't be surprised if a cease and desist appeared around the time Ubuntu 16.04 goes gold.

And we all know how much Oracle likes to suing people for products they didn't even create *cough*java*cough*.

[tegs]

RMS may advocate for GPL, but that doesn't make him a lawyer.
Why would you think he knows better than lawyers anyway? And I'm not saying Canonical's lawyers are right, I'm just saying you can't tell at this point. You can have an opinion, but you can't tell.

Because he wrote all versions of the GPL. Idiot.

[nils_]

This. Canonical is taking a bit of a risk - in the best case they get to ship ZFS, but in the worst case it will be a PR disaster if they lose against Oracle and have to withdraw ZFS after tens of thousands of customers have already started using it. Once it's out there being used in the wild there will be no viable automated upgrade route back to ext4 (or whatever), and customer systems will be unbootable if Canonical is forced to push kernel upgrades that don't support ZFS.

The solution would then be to switch back to the PPA provided by zfsonlinux like most people who use ZFS on Linux currently do.

[vladpetric]

And we all know how much Oracle likes to suing people for products they didn't even create *cough*java*cough*.

They bought Sun in its entirety, and that includes all the Java IP that Sun owned.

No, I'm not a big fan of copyrightable APIs, but strictly from an ownership perspective they are entitled to sue.

[tegs]

I just don't see the point in shipping ZFS with the ISOs for the desktop and the different flavors. I could only see this being valuable in shipping with their Ubuntu Server ISOs as that is where this is going to be used anyways. Why don't they just keep ZFS as a separate package or not ship it with the ISO and then bring it in via an apt upgrade of a meta package.

[k1l_]

I just don't see the point in shipping ZFS with the ISOs for the desktop and the different flavors. I could only see this being valuable in shipping with their Ubuntu Server ISOs as that is where this is going to be used anyways. Why don't they just keep ZFS as a separate package or not ship it with the ISO and then bring it in via an apt upgrade of a meta package.

Ever heard of this things called containers? http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/...untu-1604.html

[bug77]

Because he wrote all versions of the GPL. Idiot.

I was about to write that there's indeed an idiot in this this discussion. But I'm hoping you're just young/clueless.

[finalzone]

I was told that there's absolutely no issue with CDDL violation (i.e. Oracle has no legal case). OpenZFS was legally forked before Oracle closed off their Solaris/ZFS code. The only issue is whether distributing ZFS the way Ubuntu has violates the GPL.

The devil in the details is the fork i.e. OpenZFS still inherits the CDDL license. The silence from Oracle is definitely alarming as if the company is waiting from Canonical making the move before striking.

[Stellarwind]

There is no CDDL violation in including zfs in Ununtu side by side with Linux kernel as a module. Problem is in possible GPL violation. CDDL basically saying use it where you want, but it must remain under CDDL. GPL insists that every "derived work" that comes together with GPL, must be under GPL as well. Canonical does not claim ZFS is under GPL, so it doesn't violate CDDL requirement and Oracle has no grounds to sue. Canonical also claims that ZFS is not a derived work of the kernel, therefore they can keep CDDL license, but some people disagree.

p.s. "Rampant layering violations" is actually a good case for ZFS being alien to Linux and therefore not a derived work.

[BreezeDM]

If Oracle makes a move they will wait until it is wide spread. Even if it is clearly not a violation, I wouldn't put it past the company that claimed copyright on a range check function to sue.