Oracle Intends To Keep Trying To Make Oracle Linux Compatible With RHEL

[skeevy420]

I don't disagree with this, but AFAICS copyright law won't be abandoned in the foreseeable future. So to protect the commons, we use strict licenses to keep stuff open. If we don't defend the licensing, we run the risk of everyone just appropriating the code and not supporting the commons. That way FOSS will wither and become unviable.

There is a lot that is codified in law for intellectual works where I question the validity, the ethics and the practicality. E.g. the insane length of copyright duration. Or the no rights at all, bar a few feeble exemptions which can be disputed in court, because it's on a case by case basis. Or tying the medium (book, disk, etc) to the right to use a work.

I completely agree with that...though I think we have a difference of opinion on long-term licensing where I'd like it to switch to a freer license instead of staying as is.

What sucks is that, originally, copyright was 20 years and corporations have lobbied the government to extend it to these insane lengths so they can keep on selling Beatles Box Sets and prevent anyone else from using Public Domain like they were able to use. It's very ironic how nearly all of Disney's most popular and profitable work came from retelling Public Domain stories and they're lobbying their ass off to prevent anyone else from doing the same.

That's why I'd like all code to become Public Domain after so many years. To prevent the Microsofts and Oracles of the world from paying off developers to license their code away from public eyes. To prevent code from staying closed for death+some years like art. To prevent code from staying in a GPL bubble, a CDDL bubble, an Apache bubble, a WTFPL bubble; so that after some time everything will be open and will be able to be freely used with anything else.

[Zhivago]

My information is a bit limited since I only deal with Oracle in SAP installations, but according to SAP, such installations are NOT licensed by Oracle in public cloud on anything other than Oracle Linux and Windows ...

I linked to the pages where AWS and Google tell you how to deploy Oracle DB on their public clouds on RHEL and SLES, so the most likely conclusion is that your SAP rep was being less than accurate about its competitor's licensing terms.

Thanks for the explanation. If this is all true, then you've basically done more than Oracle to clarify the situation. So they could reach out to change the license if the signers are not yet deceased, as you said. I think it is a reasonable think to ask Oracle to help with!

It would be lovely if Oracle issued a press release explaining why they don't re-license ZFS under GPLv2 or issue a CDDLv2 that resolves the apparent license conflict and clears the way for ZFS to be a first-class citizen in Linux, but frankly I doubt that the issue is even remotely close to being on their radar. As mdedetrich mentioned, Oracle inherited the CDDL from Sun and the most likely explanation for why they didn't change it is simply inertia and lack of customer demand for such a change. Oracle is a participant in open source, and they do some good like with OpenJDK and some bad like with OpenSolaris, but it's still a commercial software company, not much different from IBM or Microsoft. I just wouldn't expect much to change with ZFS at this point. If you want an enterprise-grade filesystem and aren't comfortable with OpenZFS on Linux, then it's either XFS or something more exotic like Ceph for larger use cases.

[bridgman]

Generally speaking its not really possible to update the terms of an already existing license (unless you decide to change the license for code that you own). What can happen is to provide further clarifications, but this is an incredibly complex matter that often occurs out of court cases. Also I don't know what text you are referring to, but if its <section 4.3 of v1.1> Its specifically referencing the "initial developer" and if people outside of Oracle make a contribution they are the initial developer of that contribution which means they have control over whether they want to change the license.

I was looking at the previous section:

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. If the Initial Developer includes a notice in the Original Software prohibiting it from being distributed or otherwise made available under any subsequent version of the License, You must distribute and make the Covered Software available under the terms of the version of the License under which You originally received the Covered Software. Otherwise, You may also choose to use, distribute or otherwise make the Covered Software available under the terms of any subsequent version of the License published by the license steward.

The interesting part is the second and third sentences, which seem to say that unless the developer explicitly blocked the use of new license versions in their code then the code can be redistributed under new versions of CDDL.

https://spdx.org/licenses/CDDL-1.1.html

To be clear, this is purely a discussion about possibilities and obstacles - I don't remember ever hearing Oracle say that they wanted to integrate ZFS into Linux.

[ssokolow]

The interesting part is the second and third sentences, which seem to say that unless the developer explicitly blocked the use of new license versions in their code then the code can be redistributed under new versions of CDDL.

Looks like they baked the "or later" part of the "GPLv2 or later" concept into the CDDL itself, instead of requiring people to remember to say it in the license declaration. (i.e. making the "or later" part opt-out, rather than opt-in.)

[Zhivago]

To be clear, this is purely a discussion about possibilities and obstacles - I don't remember ever hearing Oracle say that they wanted to integrate ZFS into Linux.

If Oracle wanted to use ZFS on Linux for internal consumption, they could certainly do that. They own the codebase to commercial ZFS and could modify and run that in kernel space without violating the GPLv2 as long as they didn't distribute the code outside of Oracle. Remember, the viral component of GPLv2 is triggered by distribution.

But what is far more likely is that ZFS is end-of-life at Oracle. They're clearly focused on the cloud business now. Commercial ZFS will die with commercial Solaris, whenever that cash cow of legacy customers dries up decades from now. This is the fate of all of the old guard of commercial Unix. Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX exist now only as long tails of support revenue for Oracle, IBM, and HPE, respectively.

[RomuloP]

So? Use BSD licenses, and BSD distros. You have lots of options. No reason to feel like a prisoner.

Or use GPL carefully in a contentious way... While things change...