LXD Fork Incus Looking At Bcachefs Storage Driver & Upcoming LTS Release

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LXD Fork Incus Looking At Bcachefs Storage Driver & Upcoming LTS Release

It's been just shy of four months since the Incus 0.1 release as a fork of the LXD project after Canonical re-asserted control over LXD last summer. Incus though is showing great potential and should be an interesting 2024...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Incus-FOSDEM-2024

[Jabberwocky]

I think about the meaning of Ubuntu every time Canonical takes others people's code, whether that's through CLA, GPL or just plain old public domain code.

Ubuntu is sometimes translated as "I am because we are" also "I am because you are" or "humanity towards others"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Experience_ubuntu.ogv

[hedonist]

Good on incus for dropping the dependency on greedy Canonical, i wish them good luck on achieving their goals and going a different direction. As an ecosystem we should be using alternatives to ubuntu/canonical products and breaking out of the walled garden Canonical wants to push on users. Open Flatpak replacing Closed Snap, etc.

[Britoid]

I'm interested in the native distro packaging on Fedora.

LXD has been unusable on Fedora and related distros due to Canonical trying to shove the Snap package into everyones throat.

[daemonburrito]

I guess this discussion is going to continue where the one in December left off...

First, cards on the table: Canonical is meh-to-gross, not pining for Mir or upstart (I used Xubuntu or Gnubuntu in those days), Ubuntu gets way more credit for its Debian repackaging than it deserves, is too comfortable working with Microsoft, and CLAs are the devil (imho).

However, the interesting part of the project takeover to me was the relicensing from Apache 2.0 to Affero GPL 3.0. Overall, if it wasn't for the CLA, it would be a net-positive move for me. It's a very stark demonstration of the weakness of permissive licenses that Canonical can incorporate Incus changes but not vice-versa. Copyleft good.

Obvs, I've never seen Ubuntu do anything from a purely humanitarian standpoint, and the license change probably isn't out of devotion to FLOSS, but I don't immediately see the strategy for Canonical.

[nadir]

I guess this discussion is going to continue where the one in December left off...

First, cards on the table: Canonical is meh-to-gross, not pining for Mir or upstart (I used Xubuntu or Gnubuntu in those days), Ubuntu gets way more credit for its Debian repackaging than it deserves, is too comfortable working with Microsoft, and CLAs are the devil (imho).

However, the interesting part of the project takeover to me was the relicensing from Apache 2.0 to Affero GPL 3.0. Overall, if it wasn't for the CLA, it would be a net-positive move for me. It's a very stark demonstration of the weakness of permissive licenses that Canonical can incorporate Incus changes but not vice-versa. Copyleft good.

Obvs, I've never seen Ubuntu do anything from a purely humanitarian standpoint, and the license change probably isn't out of devotion to FLOSS, but I don't immediately see the strategy for Canonical.

Do I understand you correctly that incus really can't just adopt any changes LXD undergoes after the license change? Unusual situation for a community fork.

[daemonburrito]

Do I understand you correctly that incus really can't just adopt any changes LXD undergoes after the license change? Unusual situation for a community fork.

That's my reading of it; afaik Ubuntu has already pulled in code, and added headers saying that it's an Apache2.0 asset, which is what they're considering compliance. And that would make sense.

Getting my info from linuxcontainers.org's leader:

https://stgraber.org/2023/12/12/lxd-now-re-licensed-and-under-a-cla/

[jabl]

Do I understand you correctly that incus really can't just adopt any changes LXD undergoes after the license change? Unusual situation for a community fork.

Incus forked the last commit before the relicense, and wants to keep the code under the Apache-2.0 license. Hence they can't incorporate code under AGPLv3 since that would effectively cause the aggregate work to be under the AGPLv3 as well, which they don't want.

[flower]

Nice, I hope we'll get one for podman too

[timofonic]

That's my reading of it; afaik Ubuntu has already pulled in code, and added headers saying that it's an Apache2.0 asset, which is what they're considering compliance. And that would make sense.

Getting my info from linuxcontainers.org's leader:

https://stgraber.org/2023/12/12/lxd-...d-under-a-cla/

Canonical is importing Apache 2.0 code from Incus to LXD, without CLA signing. They're breaking the CLA this way.

LXD is dying. Long life to Incus!

Incus developers should get assessment from entities such as Software Freedom Conservancy and others. They probably asked for it already.

Canonical always did bad stuff since years ago, it's a Microsoft's puppet. It's just getting worse.

Anyway, forks can make very nice stuff. It seems the Canonical💘MS strategy is failing again