Native ZFS in Fedora?

[Alan Cox]

> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/uptake-of-native-linux-zfs-port-hampered-by-license-conflict.ars
> 
> "The CDDL does not restrict modification and release of the ZFS source
> code which is publicly available as part of OpenSolaris. The ZFS code
> can be modified to build as a CDDL licensed kernel module which is not
> distributed as part of the Linux kernel. This makes a Native ZFS on
> Linux implementation possible if you are willing to download and build
> it yourself."

I would be very surprised if a ZFS module modified to work with the Linux
kernel is not itself a derivative work of the kernel and thus in part
GPL, simply due to the nature of the interfaces and the uniqueness of the
Linux vfs layer.

I am not however a lawyer.

Hopefully with Sun now owned by Oracle the political reasons to create
such licence incompatibilities are gone. It still leaves the NetApp
patent spat with Sun to sort out. But beyond that hopefully Oracle will
see sense depending how btrfs and zfs fit into their strategy.

Alan