Oracle Could Still Make ZFS A First-Class Upstream Linux File-System

[k1e0x]

By law it turns out Macros in header files are classed as inserting code not protected as interface. So to fully exploit features of Linux kernel or any kernel not licensed under CDDL that with derivative work clauses with a driver written under CDDL you are stuffed.



Those proprietary drivers exist because Oracle/Sun uses 4.1 of CDDL.

• 4.1. New Versions.
  
  Sun Microsystems, Inc. is the initial license steward and may publish revised and/or new versions of this License from time to time. Each version will be given a distinguishing version number. Except as provided in Section 4.3, no one other than the license steward has the right to modify this License.

That is from 1.0 Of course oracle has updated that in 1.1 to have Oracle instead of Sun Microsystems.

So here closed source developers we will give you a SDK under X special sub version of CDDL that says you don't have to obey 3.1 and we give you that if you let us vet your driver.


All those parties have agreed to 4.1 by using CDDL. So Oracle could say that the new version of CDDL is GPL and that would be instantly able to re-license the complete thing. Basically you have not read the CDDL license using it you have given absolute control of License to Sun at first then Oracle.

So legally over my dead body statements with CDDL would be worth nothing because the power to re-license has already been given.

GPL you could remove the or latter clause so limiting FSF control.

Remember CDDL is design that Sun could change their mind like release a new version of CDDL that allowed them to take all CDDL works closed source.

So a single stroke of a pen in Oracle legal department could end the incompatibilities between CDDL and GPL also a single stroke of a pen in Oracle could allow them to take something under CDDL license make it closed source and extend it and there is nothing those who worked on the CDDL project could do anything about it.

So like it or not almost all the work on OpenZFS basically owns to Oracle as they have absolute control over how it licensed. Yes standing behind CDDL for patent protection comes at a hell of a price.

This is all bullshit and FUD. The code doesn't pollute your OS licence, that is absurd. FreeBSD gets by just fine using it without turning the entire kernel to a CDDL licence. Jesus christ.. it's total fear mongering. GPL is the viral code, not CDDL because of the derivative works clause. CDDL is probably compatible with GPL also, the only people who are saying it isn't is FSF and the GNU who are also propagating the aforementioned conspiracy theory. Debian was going to ship it till the FSF stopped them. Ubuntu ignored the FSF and DID ship it and a few other Linux distros ship it as well and almost all of them ship it in binary module form. Again defining the Solaris Portability Layer and ZFS as a works of "Linux" is the real insanity here.. no court would support that claim. Not everyone likes the GPL or would even want to use it because of that. I'm in that camp too, I think it's a determent to free software. Free should mean free, the BSD's get this right.. the MPL's and CDDL's (weak copyleft) come close.

Nice theory with your cherry picking but.. you are wrong.

4.2. Effect of New Versions.

You may always continue to use, distribute or otherwise make the
Covered Software available under the terms of the version of the
License under which You originally received the Covered Software.

Oracle has one of the largest legal teams ever created and "sue everyone" is the company motto. They already DID close the source for OpenSolaris and ZFS by changing it's licence, they HAD to do that because they themselves were not in compliance with the CDDL with the release of Solaris 11. They can not release binaries without source.. they had to re-licence and CDDL only has an option to accept new versions, it's not mandatory. If they could have closed OpenSolaris, they would have. Joyent is owned by Samsung... dunt ja thunk Oracle lawyers would roll up and want them to pay for an Illumos licence if they could just like Caldera and SCO did to Chrysler and Autozone for claiming ownership of Linux?

Your not seeing the real picture here. This is a power play by Oracle against Illumos and OpenZFS because.............. they have no none nada control over OpenZFS.

[oiaohm]

This is all bullshit and FUD. The code doesn't pollute your OS licence, that is absurd. FreeBSD gets by just fine using it without turning the entire kernel to a CDDL licence.

Freebsd kernel license does not block being stomped all over. So the include parts of freebsd macros in CDDL files do not cause legal issues because you can allow CDDL to become the license in that file.

CDDL is file limited. GPL and CDDL cannot be mixed in the same file. Its not just FSF that says this. Software Freedom Law Center

http://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2016/linux-kernel-cddl.html

If you don't like this law firm group I can just keep on quoting others that repeatably give the same answer after to doing proper assessment of GPL and CDDL. Also this has changed in the USA since GPL was declared contract so removing consumer law protections.

Debian did not stop from include ZFS because FSF told them to. It because Debian got 8 legal reviews from 8 different legal firms that gave exactly the same answer of incompatible just with variations in how bad.

Basically this is lets blame FSF instead of accepting there is a real problem here.

Oracle has one of the largest legal teams ever created and "sue everyone" is the company motto. They already DID close the source for OpenSolaris and ZFS by changing it's licence, they HAD to do that because they themselves were not in compliance with the CDDL with the release of Solaris 11. They can not release binaries without source.. they had to re-licence and CDDL only has an option to accept new versions, it's not mandatory. If they could have closed OpenSolaris, they would have. Joyent is owned by Samsung... dunt ja thunk Oracle lawyers would roll up and want them to pay for an Illumos licence if they could just like Caldera and SCO did to Chrysler and Autozone for claiming ownership of Linux?

CDDL the new version allowing oracle to-do what ever would have to be released before they shipped anything. Just because Oracle has a big legal team does not mean they are the smartest all the time. Basically they goofed up closing up Solaris 11 does not mean they lost the rights to-do just that. Next time they attempt they should get it right.. Caldera and SCO claiming ownership over Linux was baseless. Orcale over CDDL is not baseless.

Bit in what you wrote Orcale had to release code because they were not in compliance with CDDL at the time they did the action. Fixed simply if they had released a new version of CDDL saying oracle is allowed to close source directly then does exactly that.

Yes you are right section 4.2 would allow people to keep a project going under CDDL version 1.0 or 1.1 if Orcale release a CDDL version 1.2. One problem is due to 4.1 clause Oracle could take any code fixes in the CDDL 1.0, 1.1 license stuff and merge into what ever CDDL version 1.2 is because of clause 3.1 in version 1.0 and 1.1 cddl. This is exactly what happen with openoffice vs libreoffice. So any patch in openoffice of interest can be ported to libreoffice but any patch of interest in LibreOffice cannot be ported back to openoffice.

Orcale can legally take everything that is OpenZFS and release it under a different license and there is absolutely nothing you could legally do about it as long as they do Orcale by releasing a new CDDL version. Orcale has goofed that step in the past.

The case you need to read it the recent case that said GPL is a contract in the USA. This case said that GPL section 0 is enforceable. Section 0 need to be not enforceable for CDDL compatibility in the USA.

The reality is now CDDL and GPL without question are not compatible every legal arguement to restrict GPL terms were rejected in the case declaring GPL under contract law without restrictions from other laws.

"Canonical, Ltd. was incorporated on the Isle of Man"
This is a fact that is forgotten. Debian country of registration is the USA so has to play by USA laws. Canonical behind Ubuntu is Isle of Man. So of course Canonical don't have to worry as much about the conflict they are legally not in a jurisdiction that has a problem. Of course Canonical customers are another matter. Ubuntu stated they did not have a legal problem with shipping ZFS they did not say their customers would be in the same lucky location.

What is legal on one country may be totally illegal in another. Yes its important to remember FSF gives out a lot of stuff based on German and Usa rulings.

[audir8]

oiaohm You did not actually read the link you're now mentioning, and which I posted on the second page of this thread. Here again are the relevant parts:

Because both GPLv2 and CDDL have some elements of strong copyleft, requiring some forms of redistribution to occur only under the terms of that license, questions have repeatedly arisen over their history about the consequences of various combinations of code under the licenses. Such questions are again important, and raise issues on which clarity is essential for the avoidance of deadweight loss to the users copyleft is designed to protect.

...

When, in this mode of employment, the CDDL-licensed code implementing the filesystem is combined with the module-specific translation layer and the result is then statically or dynamically linked into the Linux kernel, the resulting binary is licensed to all users under the terms of GPLv2, and only GPLv2, as the license requires. This happens because CDDL gives permission for binary forms of the code it licenses to be released under any license, and the license terms in effect are those of GPLv2. The making of the binary itself does not result in infringement of the kernel copyrights, or a violation of GPLv2's terms.

But GPLv2 section 3 requires for compliant distribution of such a binary that "complete and corresponding source code" be provided or offered. GPLv2 section 2(b) requires that the source code must be made available under "the terms of this license." The source trees of many GPL-licensed works, including the Linux kernel, contain files originally published by their authors under other free software licensing terms. In these cases, where the licenses involved are "permissive" licenses---such as a GPL-compatible BSD license, the MIT/X11 license or the equivalent---it can be said that GPLv2 section 2(b) is literally complied with, because those licenses permit the source code to be placed under other license terms, and those files are "relicensed" to GPL when they are included in the larger project's source tree. Though this is literally satisfactory from the GPL perspective, it raises equitable concerns of another kind. The improvements or modifications made to that code within the context of the GPL'd project can now not be picked up and used by the original projects or other downstream developers, unless they are prepared to place their entire work under GPL copyleft terms. This "traps" the improvements to the original contribution where they cannot be reused by the original contributors under their preferred terms. This is legitimate conduct on the part of the GPL-using project, but it unnecessarily deteriorates comity among free software developers. A better approach than the "relicensing" approach is to keep the files so employed within the GPL-licensed project's source tree with their additional licensing material intact, even when modified, so that if those files, or any parts thereof, are removed from the GPL'd project they can be reused under the original license, with the improvements made in the GPL'd context fully available under those terms. This is the official advice of SFLC to its GPL-using clients. See Maintaining Permissive-Licensed Files in a GPL-Licensed Project: Guidelines for Developers

...

But the interpretation of GPLv2 with respect to Dtrace would be irrelevant if the copyright holder of Dtrace, Oracle, gave permission for Dtrace to be integrated with the kernel on GPL-compatible terms. This, by its own actions, it has done. As part of its Oracle Unbreakable Linux product, and the services it provides to Oracle customers, Oracle has itself made and distributed the combination of the Linux kernel and Dtrace. Those kernels were distributed to its customers under the terms of GPLv2, and Oracle is therefore estopped to deny others the permission to do what it has done. Oracle being the only copyright holder in Dtrace, it has the power to give permission for the combination to be made under terms compatible with GPLv2, and in the context in which it has acted it has, by its acting, done so. No question arises whether the kernel licensors have permitted, would permit, or should permit this combination: the required permission has already come, by way of estoppel, from the other side.

Yes, Oracle could clear things up like dtrace, and the Linux community could also do the same like they have for blobs and sources of all other kinds via a tainted kernel and AFS-like exceptions. Differently licensed source trees are maintained outside the kernel code base and things get along fine, but it does require some work getting there. This is also all possible because the mere existence of Oracle ZFS means Open ZFS will remain open, no ifs, ands, or, buts about it, so you'll excuse me if I ignore your specific reading of CDDL clauses. There is no court which will entertain an Oracle coming after Open ZFS when they sell/maintain an Oracle ZFS they themselves forked years ago.

Here is what Linus Torvalds said at the time: https://lkml.org/lkml/2007/6/12/232 when Sun wouldn't have hesitated to make an explicit exception for GPLv2 in some form like they did fully re-license Java, and quite a few other projects.

The fact is, if you want to use ZFS, you'd likely go with FreeBSD today, and there is no reason why this couldn't be Linux with some additional work from the existing OpenZFS/Linux communities. If Oracle or NetApp want to troll Linux users the way SCO did, that's too bad for them, not the open source community.

[k1e0x]

Freebsd kernel license does not block being stomped all over. So the include parts of freebsd macros in CDDL files do not cause legal issues because you can allow CDDL to become the license in that file.

Seems like a Linux problem.. if only they had a free licence.

I worked in the 90's, back when Linux was considered to be a toy os.. and I understand the black threat of proprietary software. There was a point in history where it really did look like Microsoft was going to own all of computing. Those were dark times so I understand that the GPL may have had it's place in history... today tho it seems to do little more than cause problems.. be it dtrace, zfs, or nvidia drivers. I'd like to see a world where Linux can compete without the chains of legal lawyers that it tried so hard to defeat in the 90's. We were the hippies, not the suits. Tho today... I really don't know if the direction Linux is going is even worth following anymore.. So for me this argument is meaningless because of course I'm going to use FreeBSD for every storage and server system.. it's better at it imo and that's ok.. we can choose to disagree and you can use what you like I'm not trying to say what system you should use, what I'm getting at tho is my vested interest in this is somewhat low and as someone who did serve in the trenches of the free software war in the 90's... I offer a warning.. you can not trust Microsoft and you can not trust Oracle. We've won.. but we should continue with the goal of eradicating them from the earth.

Just some words of wise from an old vet.. take is as you will but if Oracle wants ZFS in Linux then this should be a major concern for you. In most respects you don't even need it as the current system with ZoL seems to be perfectly fine.. it's just not well embraced by some of the community and that is a shame.

[oiaohm]

oiaohm You did not actually read the link you're now mentioning, and which I posted on the second page of this thread. Here again are the relevant parts:

Lot of those work around with CDDL and GPLv2 are killed in the court case ruling GPL as a Contract. Like CDDL allows binary to ship under different license but when the binary is licensed GPL the source code of the binary has to be able to ship GPLv2 and since CDDL says source cannot be under any other license breach of contract shipping the binary. This arguement was in the court case that ruled GPL a contract was confirmed be the case that a mix of CDDL and GPLv2 code is not on. Ok the license was not CDDL it was something under a NDA license in the court case that had the same problem of "only under the terms of this license". What that clause means is ruled on in court..

Non conflicting licenses can be embedded inside GPL works due to the derivative works clauses. CDDL is conflict so the additional licensing material intact does not work at all because CDDL terms forbid you from doing the GPL actions.

"Source Code form must be distributed only under the terms of this License."
Its this bit of CDDL that sends you to hell with GPL. Like if that was "Must be able to be distributed under only the terms of this License" Wrapped inside GPL would work as you would be able to put gpl terms on top and everything would be fine. It could be messy having to declare what line are GPL and what likes are CDDL but it would be workable.

Orcale could basically clean this complete mess up in a stroke of a pen and modify the 3.1 clause in a new version of CDDL.

Seems like a Linux problem.. if only they had a free licence.

https://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.html

The extra term in the freebsd license on source code does in fact conflict with CDDL. There have not been court cases on the freebsd license to know how enforceable those terms are. Currently it presumes that CDDL mandate to remove non matching terms is not breaching license. Freebsd License states that freebsd notices are meant to be on freebsd source and items built from freebsd source this is not allowed by CDDL.

So the CDDL license ZFS driver under FreeBSD might be illegal as well. It is legally safer and more predictable to embed GPLv2 inside the Freebsd kernel than what it is embed CDDL. That 3.1 clause problem fairly much ruins your day.

k1e0x basically lack of license enforcement in the Freebsd world allow you to get away with breaching the freebsd license left right and centre. Can you be sure this lack of license enforcement will remain that way forever?

So claiming only if Linux has a free license does not solve the problem. Freebsd is allowing people to stomp all over their license in ways that are most likely breaching law. CDDL is a very incompatible license. Including extra terms you breach CDDL and removing extra terms that you could be required to have will be breaching the other license so leaving you stuffed.

GPL is a pain in ass of license but it thousand times more friendly than CDDL and other licenses like it.

[k1e0x]

Enforcement? Not sure you and I have the same definition of freedom.. to me freedom doesn't mean lawyers telling you what you can and can not do. The general attitude I get from the BSD community is "Here is some code, don't sue us." It is a refreshing attitude. And ya know.. this is a very very old argument.. there is no reason we have to agree here. It's a state of mind.. if you think you need to pull guns on people then stick with the GPL.. I however don't think we need to do that anymore because open source has proven itself to work. Look at Docker, as closed source it was unknown and the company was going out of business, as open source it started the container revolution. We don't need guns.

And it's ok to disagree with me. It's a belief thing so thats just where I stand. : shrug :

[oiaohm]

Enforcement? Not sure you and I have the same definition of freedom.. to me freedom doesn't mean lawyers telling you what you can and can not do. The general attitude I get from the BSD community is "Here is some code, don't sue us." It is a refreshing attitude. And ya know.. this is a very very old argument.. there is no reason we have to agree here. It's a state of mind.. if you think you need to pull guns on people then stick with the GPL.. I however don't think we need to do that anymore because open source has proven itself to work. Look at Docker, as closed source it was unknown and the company was going out of business, as open source it started the container revolution. We don't need guns.

I know BSD community has that point of view. Thing to remember is that all software licenses are legal documents and you need these legal documents to protect yourself.

https://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.html

This is not just a do not sue license. The two clauses ask for attribution and the legal statement that you are not libel on any published work for binary and source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc._v._Berkeley_Software_Design,_Inc.

BSD class licenses have been enforced in the past when parties have removes the BSD licenses or failed to follow them. This has to happen so that the legal clause prevent people from suing you is passed to end users.

CDDL we have very few enforcement cases.

CDDL is fairly much incompatible with everything.

Section 5 and 7 in CDDL does not project you as well as the single clause in the BSD class licenses. So if you don't want to be able to be sued you don't want CDDL forbidding the extra terms. If you need to include extra terms to limit you liability you can do this with GPL and BSD class licenses but CDDL term section 3.1 gets in the way of this.

BSD world heavily miss understand enforcement of license. Enforcement is that terms of license are followed and are being followed and can be followed. BSD people need their licenses enforceable to that if someone sue you that you can fall back on license enforcement to end the case. So if you have two license in conflict and both licenses can end up declared voided due to being impossible to perform the requirements. Being that Freebsd license and CDDL could end up in conflict this is a problem along with all the other licenses that can end up on conflict with CDDL. If the licenses are declared void due to conflict you are left standing without any legal protection from being sued.

License compatibility or incompatibility should be just as much of a worry to a BSD people as a GPL people. But lots of BSD people are in the bad habit of lets sweep this under carpet and hope it goes away.

I really would like Orcale to post a new version of CDDL with section 3.1 fixed then it could be truly compatible with GPL works and BSD works and basically anything that is not CDDL with requirements of terms on source code. Until then CDDL is fairly much a live hand grenade that we hope no one pulled the pin on.

So I find it really funny that BSD people say they want to release source code without being sued and they don't care about license enforcement absolutely. Yes we don't want lawyer tell use what to-do is not going to-do you any good if you end up on court. You want lawyers telling you want you can and cannot do before you end up in court so that the case is open and shut in your favour.

[k1e0x]

This is why people hate lawyers ya know. You invent a secret language called law and monopolize it and bully people with it. It is an age old method of the powerful controlling the powerless. I've said what I've said here and I stand by it, there are some big gaps in your assessments here especially of 3.1 because of 3.6 again your cherry picking what suits your argument. I think your wrong, and I'd let you take it to court. You can look at the most vicious legal team ever Oracle's.. why haven't they sued Apple (dtrace), Samsung (Illumos), Netflix, Sony, Nintendo, Facebook (FreeBSD) etc? CDDL is in wide use by major companies. The reason why is they are nice people.. oh wait.. no the reason why is they have no case.

Also you need to refer to this version (1.0) because nobody cares what changes Oracle made. (will make).
https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/bl...OLARIS.LICENSE

If you want to petition Oracle, then petition them to follow the licence they signed under the spirit of free software and give us the code for Solaris again.. I mean.. your looking at a company that yanked back open source, just spit in the face of the developers and you think they are good and are going to help you?

I didn't say there wasn't enforcement of BSD, I said that was the general attitude.. it's peoples own property and if they want to enforce it that is their right. By enlarge the aren't "enforcement happy" though. I mean BSD wrote the TCP/IP stack.. prob the most lifted code ever. (and they said they were sorry too lol)

Again I just think you have an agenda here. Your looking for small things in the licence that support your ideas because you want it to be true or you want to spread fud and scare people away from the CDDL to defend the GPL but you are failing to look at the larger works. Your making these claims and... for reasons unknown to me.. I'm entertaining this conversation because I think your intelligent but your agenda is getting in the way of your logic.

Also with regards to Canonical being from the Isle of Man.. good for them. I hope they continue to advance good software regardless of anal lawyers. We want to push technology forward and make the best systems we can.. not make the best words on paper that we can sue everyone over.

There is some claims that the GPL is also flawed in that it can't create a new definition of what a derivative works is to include usage and or modification therefore under US law the standard definition applies.. meaning Ubuntu is correct, they are already compatible.

[oiaohm]

This is why people hate lawyers ya know. You invent a secret language called law and monopolize it and bully people with it. It is an age old method of the powerful controlling the powerless. I've said what I've said here and I stand by it, there are some big gaps in your assessments here especially of 3.1 because of 3.6 again your cherry picking what suits your argument. I think your wrong, and I'd let you take it to court. You can look at the most vicious legal team ever Oracle's.. why haven't they sued Apple (dtrace), Samsung (Illumos), Netflix, Sony, Nintendo, Facebook (FreeBSD) etc? CDDL is in wide use by major companies. The reason why is they are nice people.. oh wait.. no the reason why is they have no case.

https://opensource.apple.com/source/...im.c.auto.html
Apple has legal and they implement dtrace like zfs for Linux to keep isolation between there code base and dtrace code base this is why particular features of dtrace don't work under OS X. Apple license has a clause.
https://opensource.apple.com/source/...ENSE.auto.html
Apple license clause
1.5 "Larger Work" means a work which combines Covered Code or portions thereof with code not governed by the terms of this License.
This clause means CDDL license can be exclusive on particular files and not have extra terms and not be covered by the Apple license. FreeBSD license does not have this clause. This is a form of derivative work clause.

Illumos again Samsung is very careful on how they mix the licenses they have a legal department to vet this stuff. Facebook removes the zfs driver from freebsd use in networking because their legal team don't like as it feared to be in conflict.

k1e0x basically there are correct processes. Big companies have legal departments that job is to audit source code licenses and make sure everything is in order.

Reason why there is no case against those companies you listed is they have worried about enforcement.

https://www.blackducksoftware.com/to...ource-licenses Get off the bull as well. CDDL is not a really widely used license. There is almost no new projects that use CDDL. CDDL licensed stuff is mostly works based on what sun released.

Also you need to refer to this version (1.0) because nobody cares what changes Oracle made. (will make).

So if Orcale ever sells of sun micro-systems trademark you will be happy with who ever that is re-licensing stuff.

Besides did you not notice that I started by quoting from 1.0 version of CDDL it has the problem.

k1e0x reality here is you agenda is getting in your way. Why do you think facebook employees btrfs lead developer if they could trust CDDL they would not.

Reality here is CDDL licensed works used by companies are normally kept isolated due it being a problem child license.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cdrtoo...ty_controversy
The reality here is CDDL is a toxic license. No matter your agenda k1e0x it does not change the historic facts. CDDL as been ruled incompatible so many times its not funny. As the Cdrtools project found out third party developer backed by companies left.

There is some claims that the GPL is also flawed in that it can't create a new definition of what a derivative works is to include usage and or modification therefore under US law the standard definition applies.

There is a problem ruled in the recent court case that declared GPL a contract. GPL was written before the USA law had a full standard definition covering how and what a derivative work is. In fact the USA law still does not have a full define of what a derivative work is this is why a contract can define it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work

There are there areas of undefined in USA law about Derivative works. GPL defines those areas to a limited amount for the GPL contract so 100 percent legal like it or not. The arguement you brought up now was reject for being ground less in the recent court case that declared GPL a contract.

(1) what acts are sufficient to cause a copyright-protected derivative work to come into existence;

This section is not define under USA law. So if you say the GPL define of Derivative work does not apply GPL is million times more Viral. A contract is allowed to fill in undefined sections of law. And when you have a contract filling in a section not defined in the law you are now in contract law and are completely out side the law with the undefined section. Once you are pure in contract law is now yes or no answers to Did you conform to the terms X?....

Basically be very scared when a contract starts defining stuff because the law does not have a full define for because it comes insanely more enforcable.

Reality is the recent court case says Canonical is wrong in the USA.

k1e0x really don't take Canonical word for stuff. Canonical only has to worry about Isle of Man law.

In court like it or not there has never been a single flaw found in GPLv2/GPLv3 license. The USA court case recently covered all the ideas people had about getting around GPLv2/GPLv3 and had them all rejected as invalid. Yes the company attempting to get around the ghostscript license tried everything. Even ideas you have not even considered yet.

[k1e0x]

I must have hit a nerve.. lol

Do judges know when you bullshit your case together or do you get away with it usually? (ie: "Illumos again Samsung is very careful on how they mix the licenses") You know what Illumos is right? They use Illumos. Thats... kinda... yeah..

Lets review..

"Oracle can steal all the code because they control the licence by being the license steward. : fear fear panic :"
No, not true. New Versions Effect: The code can never be stolen.

"CDDL is not compatible with other open source code. : fear fear panic :"
Incorrect. Larger works: The licence only retains to its own code.

"CDDL is not compatible with proprietary code. : fear fear panic :"
Incorrect. Larger works: The licence only retains to its own code.

"CDDL is file based : double fear fear panic :"
Correct. waaaat? It's file based not derivative works based. Citing this as a problem is pointless because it is a different type of licence, it applies to real files not imaginary definitions of "works" and who draws the line where. This is a philosophical argument almost.. When two things are in conflict with each other what takes precedence? The abstract or the factual? The factual does, thats why file based makes more sense. Everyone always knows where the line is. (even without going to a fancy school)

"But the MACROS!! Ohh the MACROS! The whole kernel has to be CDDL if you use any CDDL! It's viral just like.. umm.. never.. mind.."
No. ZoL compiles today without patching the kernel source at all. It is a complete implementation.

"But it doesn't use the kernel!"
Good. Half the shits broken in Linux anyhow. You want the btrfs guys to implement something as complex as ZFS? scary..

"Oracle can legally take everything that is OpenZFS! : MOST FEAR : "
So their version sucks so bad because..? why? No, Oracle has not implemented any OpenZFS improvements and there are HUGE changes. In fact Oracles attempts to provide the same functionality were poorly implemented. Oracle has to re-do it's encryption method twice and it's still broken. That is what you get when you spit on your triple A developers by closing an open source project.. you get the B team.

I could write more.. but meh.. so many inconsistencies. I didn't cite intentionally as I reckon a lawyer would find that right bothersome.