ZFS License and Future

[Chris Brennan]

 On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 12:16 PM, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 05, 2010 at 11:25:13PM -0500, Steven Susbauer wrote:
> > On 11/5/10 4:34 PM, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > >Will Oracle start using patent suits to try to stop people
> > >who aren't paying for ZFS or who are using it on platforms other than
> > >Solaris from using it?
> > >
> > >Whether you think concerns like these will prove reasonable in the long
> > >run, they make a lot more sense than assuming that Alejandro just
> wonders
> > >if the CDDL is "dangerous" somehow.
> > >
> >
> > I would be surprised. Oracle (real Oracle, not Sun) is still the primary
> > developer of btrfs on Linux. They are pretty much going for feature
> > parity with ZFS and want people to actually use it. If they start suing
> > over ZFS patents which are certainly applicable to btrfs, it will have
> > repercussions on that side.
>
> Perhaps.
>
> On the other hand, Oracle could offer some kind of "patent covenant"
> protecting btrfs while going after a ZFS fork as a way of "focing" people
> to migrate from it to btrfs, as a more hostile way of achieving what
> Microsoft does when it ends support for an older OS to get people to buy
> the newer Windows release.
>
> . . . or maybe Oracle will decide it doesn't need the open source
> community's help any longer at some future date, and shut down *both*
> open source filesystem development projects.
>
> Oracle is known to be at least intermittently hostile toward open source
> software, in ways that are sometimes more frightening than Microsoft's
> hostility.  This is scaring people, and I don't blame them.  The
> uncertainty about Oracle's future position on everything it has acquired
> with Sun is something that will need to be tested and observed to see how
> it shakes out in the next few years; in the meantime, I do not blame
> anyone for being cautious about committing to use of open source software
> under the Oracle umbrella.
>
> --
> Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
>

Chad, what are these attachments to your e-mail? My client keeps flagging
your mail as questionable and I'm sandboxing it to make sure it's nothing
bad :D