ZFS License and Future

[Steven Susbauer]

On 11/5/10 5:19 PM, Alejandro Imass wrote:
> Precisely. This is Larry Ellison's position on Open Source:
>
> <quote>
> If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it.
> [...] So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a
> company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our
> products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do. So it is
> not disruptive at all – you have to find places to add value. Once
> open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. [...]
> We don't have to fight open source, we have to exploit open source.
> </quote>
> Source: Financial Times interview, 18-Apr-2006
> http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto041820061306424713

It sounds like he's probably a big fan of the BSD license. I do not see 
how this is a bad thing, other than he uses potentially inflammatory 
words like "exploit." The basics of what he says are exactly what Red 
Hat has done from the beginning, and Apple with OS X. Note he says "take 
it for nothing," he is not referring to buying companies but the 
practice of including/distributing this software and providing support 
for the entirety.

> the technology, etc. Look at what happened to Android for choosing
> Java. Supposedly, it was Open Source and there you have it: it's open
> source if and only if... For example, WyTF do I have to login to
> Oracle to access the error message information?

Android uses the Java language, but this is not what that suit is about. 
Oracle claims the Dalvik VM infringes on their patents. If Android was 
using the Java VM there would be no lawsuit. Sun was able to 
successfully sue Microsoft for similar reasons in 1997 (incomplete 
implementation of the Java standard). Somehow people continued using 
Java, despite this.