[zfs-discuss] ZFS committed to the FreeBSD base.
Ivan Voras
ivoras at fer.hr
Tue Apr 10 09:15:08 UTC 2007
Wilko Bulte wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 07, 2007 at 12:54:57PM +0200, Jorn Argelo wrote..
>> Rich Teer wrote:
>>> This is fantastic news! At the risk of raking over ye olde arguments,
>>> as the old saying goes: "Dual licensing? We don't need no stinkeen
>>> dual licensing!". :-)
>>>
>>>
>> First of all, thanks a lot for all the hard work of both the FreeBSD
>> developers as the ZFS developers. I can't wait to give it a go.
>>
>> That leads me to one question though: Why is *BSD able to bring it into
>> the OS as where Linux has licensing problems with the CDDL? AFAIK Linux
>> users can only run it in userland mode and not in kernel mode because of
>> the licenses.
>
> My guess(!) is that they do not want non-GPL-ed code in the standard kernel.
Sorry if I'm reiterating what someone maybe already explained, but I
don't see it on the lists I read:
FreeBSD can include GPL'ed code due to a "technicality" (literally): As
long as the code is in a separate kernel module and not in the default
shipped GENERIC kernel, it's considered "bundled" and not a part of the
kernel. As soon as the user loads a GPLed kernel module, presto-changeo!
his kernel "automagically" becomes GPLed. I believe the same holds for
CDDL. (I have no idea how to resolve the licensing issues of a kernel
with both GPL and CDDL parts :) ). This is less inconvenient than it
seems since kernel modules can be (pre)loaded at the same time the
kernel loads, and so we can have a ZFS root partition, etc.
The problem with DTrace in FreeBSD is twofold:
1. It's much more intertwined with the kernel.
2. Much of its usability comes from it being available in the default
shipped kernel - so that users can use it to troubleshoot problems "on
the fly" without having to recompile and install a new kernel (involves
rebooting).
AFAIK (not involved with its development), most of dtrace can reside in
a kernel module but some parts need to be in the kernel proper to
support this mode of operation, and *this* is where the licensing comes
in. Just a few files (AFAIK: mostly header files!) need to be
dual-licensed so they can be included in the default kernel build, and
the rest can be in the CDDL licensed kernel module.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-fs/attachments/20070410/ce5feb0c/signature-0003.pgp
More information about the freebsd-fs
mailing list