On 8/25/06, Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@netbsd.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 08:30:41PM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
> > Mark Weinem wrote:
> > >
> > > So are there any known positions of the Board or of NetBSD-authorities
> > > regarding
> > > the CDDL? Is SUN's open source license okay with NetBSD?
> >
> > I don't know what the official policy is, but as much as I hate to say
> > it, I think for the same reasons that we reject GPL for most things we
> > should reject CDDL (or at least try to stay away from it.)  Don't get me
> > wrong, I love CDDL for Solaris (and I release code under it), but it is
> > nothing quite so liberal as the BSD license.  (At least it drops the
> > viral nature of GPL, but it still creates a need to release source if
> > you ship modified binaries.)
> >
> > I would therefore recommend avoiding the use of the CDDL by NetBSD
> > whenever possible.
>
> Why?
>
> I agree we don't want to blindly CDDL (or APSL, which is about the same
> thing) things, since the code does have encomberances we would be passing
> on to others.
>
> But for something like ZFS, do we really want to use something other than
> Sun's code? 1) I expect we could get a fully-functional ported ZFS much
> quicker than a from-scratch one. 2) If I understand the terms of the CDDL
> right, if you follow it, Sun grants you a license to any patents Sun has
> that involve the source. IANAL, but that seems like an advantage.
>
> Also, my understanding of "You must inform recipients of any such Covered
> Software in Executable form as to how they can obtain such Covered
> Software in Source Code form in a reasonable manner on or through a medium
> customarily used for software exchange." is that "cvs -d
> anoncvs@anoncvs.netbsd.org:/cvsroot co -d zfs -D foo src/sys/fs/zfs" is a
> "reasonable manner though which software is customarily exchanged.
>
> While we certainly want to look at things on a case-by-case basis (and
> also the board is the entity that really needs to decide), it seems to me
> that there are times when the CDDL makes sense. And as long as we make it
> clear to users of our code what is happening, they can make their own
> decisions. :-)

That was my understanding of the licensing part as well.

As far as ZFS itself is concerned, I think it is inevitable that it
will be ported to NetBSD - wheather directly or from the FreeBSD port
- considering the current state of the affairs. The only question is -
who, how and when; CDDL should not be an obstacle, considering the
gain (and before someone tells me - DIY - sorry, no clue at that level
of things).

And yes, there are DTrace, Zones...

>
> Take care,
>
> Bill
>
>
>