
Open Source Ruling Confirms Enforceability of Dual-Licensing and Breach of GPL - t3f
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/important-open-source-ruling-confirms-enforceability-dual-licensing-and-breach-gpl
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nolemurs
This is old news (see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14323265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14323265)).

It also wasn't newsworthy when it happened. There's nothing specific to the
GPL really implicated here. All the court ruled was, essentially, that you
can't just take someone's copyrighted code and use it without permission. It
would have been pretty shocking if any other result were reached at that
stage.

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grabcocque
It's perhaps a moot point. Canonical have been distributing OpenZFS binaries
for going on two years even though the FSF and the SFLC believe them to be in
violation of the GPL.

Angry blog posts doesn't cut it. The nature of law and precedent is that
unless the FSF or SFLC sue Canonical Ltd. soonish for their distribution of
OpenZFS Linux modules, their assertion that the GPL doesn't generally apply to
kernel modules will become legal precedent by default.

Now, I know the SFLC say that litigation is a last resort. But, it's been 18
months since the last Frank Exchange of Views happened over ZFS and the mutual
incompatibility of the GPL and CDDL, and no observable legal movement by
either side has happened.

Does that mean the FSF/SLFC are frightened that Canonical Ltd.s' legal
interpretation would prevail should it ever come to court, or is there another
reason the self-professed guardians of software freedom are allowing Canonical
to, according to them, wilfully violate the terms of the GPL?

~~~
chriswarbo
The FSF and SFLC aren't "allowing wilfull violation"; they aren't the
copyright owners of the Linux kernel, they just-so-happened to write some
licensing terms (the GPLv2) which the Linux kernel authors decided to use of
their own volition. If anyone's "allowing" something, it's the kernel
developers.

Keep in mind that (a) the FSF uses copyright assignment for many projects,
which would put it in a legal position to pursue infringements for those
projects, but Linux is not one of those projects; (b) the SFLC is a legal
organisation, not a software developer, so they only pursue infringements on
behalf of client projects; as far as I'm aware, Linux is not one of their
clients.

I've not waded too far into this before, but from reading
[http://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2016/linux-kernel-
cddl....](http://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2016/linux-kernel-cddl.html) it
seems to me that:

\- Canonical distributes Linux+ZFS binaries under the GPLv2.

\- As per the GPLv2, Canonical must provide the corresponding source, also
under the GPLv2.

\- The ZFS source is under the CDDL, which permits relicensing binaries (hence
it's compatible with the first point) but not relicensing of the source, which
is incompatible with the second point.

\- Hence Canonical can either provide Linux+ZFS source under the GPLv2,
violating the source's CDDL; or provide Linux source under GPLv2 and ZFS
source under CDDL, violating the binary's GPLv2; or stop distributing
Linux+ZFS binaries. They chose the second option.

\- Since CDDL and GPLv2 are both copyleft FOSS licenses, this incompatibility
is arguably a technicality since it doesn't violate the "spirit" of either
license, and may be ignored at the copyright owner's discretion.

\- The copyright owners of Linux seem to be ignoring it, which is fine.

So I don't see what the big deal is. By acting in this way, Canonical improve
the usability of their distro, whilst they and their users/customers incur the
risk that some day, potentially, they might have to change their config to
build the module separately (like Debian does).

~~~
l1ambda
And the only pertinent clause would be in the GPL (the CDDL doesn't care),
regarding if ZFS were a derivative work of Linux, which it plainly is not.

All this "GPL and CDDL are incompatible!" is nonsense.

~~~
bsder
It is not nonsense, and Sun went out of its way to make _sure_ that the CDDL
and GPL are incompatible.

So, all the ZFS on Linux users are okay until Oracle sees money in suing them.

~~~
l1ambda
> Sun went out of its way to make sure that the CDDL and GPL are incompatible.

What evidence is there of this?

~~~
wmf
Sun could have written the CDDL to be GPL-compatible yet they chose not to and
they generally refused to explain why. I suspect that they did not want to see
OpenSolaris become an "organ donor" for Linux but they also didn't want to
appear weak by saying so in public.

The closest I can find is where Simon Phipps said "to be GPL compatible you
actually have to be willing to have your license discarded and replaced with
the GPL. It's more a Borg-like assimilation than compatibility, in my view,
and pretty undesirable as it results in future code enrichment being
accumulated in some other code commons."
[https://web.archive.org/web/20050420234857/http://blogs.sun....](https://web.archive.org/web/20050420234857/http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/webmink/20050415#failed_as_in_succeeded_wildly)

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joatmon-snoo
Surprised to see this is from May. Just skimming, it sounds like something
that should've gotten some traction, if I'm not mistaken - aren't open source
licenses contested in court relatively infrequently?

------
simcop2387
Previous discussion. This was just the initial motion for dismissal rather
than a final ruling.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14323265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14323265)

------
westurner
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