And these people are talking about FUD?

And these people are talking about FUD?

This makes sense only if you ignore the various, quite sensible reasons given by several Sun notables as to why the GPL and/or dual- licensing would not have worked for Solaris.

I'm yet to see sensible reasons.

Dual-licensing: I'm reasonably sure at least one very well- respected engineer would have argued strongly against dual-licensing. It can lead to licence-forks. I.e. dual-licensing is worse than choosing the inferior of the two (incompatible) licences.

Now we have interesting dilemma: position of at least one very well- respected engineer (in Sun, I presume?) vs position of thousands of Linux developers. Hmm... Who to choose. Sorry, Sun's engeeners are revered - but not to this degree.

How many projects can you name where dual-licensing actually led to fork? There are hundreds, may be thousands dual-licensed projects (if you count not just huge projects like Firefox but smaller ones like bunch of CPAN addons). I never seen situation where addition of the license option led to fork. Removal? Sure, it can produce forks. XFree86 (changes made it incompatible with GPL, XFree86 is history now), Firefox (in addition to GPL or MPL license you must agree to the logo license and many developers find it quite onerous => we have IceCat and Iceweasel). Addition or options? Never heard of this. How often this happen, really? Can you name at least one sample?

Conclusion: FUD.

GPL: Is very incompatible with other licences (as we know from this thread).

Number of licenses does not matter. I can generate million GPL- compatible and CDDL-incompatible licenses with a simple script in five minutes. Most projects out there are GPL-compatible. Most projects out there are CDDL-incompatible. It was discussed to death.

Conclusion: FUD.

I.e. it would have made it difficult for Sun and others particularly to ship things like non-GPL (e.g. proprietary) drivers, filesystems and volume-managers with Solaris.

Somehow this is not a problem for Java or OpenOffice.org but problem for Solaris?

Conclusion: FUD.

Further, the GPLv2 does not really address patent issues, and Sun is a regular target for patent suits.

This is at least valid reason. But why this is not a problem for Java, then? Java is not important for Java company? don't make me laugh.

Conclusion: FUD.

So yes, Sun could have chosen the GPL, but instead chose the CDDL simply to frustrate Linux users - this makes perfect sense if you just block out all the other, practical reasons that relate to Sun and its needs for Solaris.

No it makes perfect sense if you know for the fact that Sun released other stategically important projects under GPL before releasing Solaris under CDDL. What exactly is different with Solaris and how it's needs differ from Java and OpenOffice.org? I never heard a plausible explanation. Binary extensions, patents, etc, etc - all these problems are equally applicable to Java, OpenOffice.org, and Solaris. I know if one plausible reason and one plausible reason ONLY: CDDL makes it impossible to implaint Solaris's goodies in Linux and so Solaris gets much needed baubles to preach which can not be just included in Linux. Because Sun's JDK and OpenOffice.org are top dogs in relavant markets and Open Solaris is underdog. Quite valid reason and I'm ready to agree that it works just fine - but why all the pusturing and empty screams "you just don't know about Solaris needs! this mythical secret needs are served so much better by CDDL then GPL - but we'll never disclose them! this is not about Linux! really! believe us!". It just does not look convincing.

Really, the problem here is that Linux contributors don't sign contributors agreements. Rather than figure out how to fix that and regain some kind of collectively-empowered, executive control, you instead direct your ire at Sun...

No, the problem here is position of Sun who puts itself above ALL OTHER Linux contributors. Basically it says: oh, sure you can use ZFS - but only of YOU ALL (Dell, IBM, Intel, etc) agree to our terms. This is called ultimatum: the rules which serve hundreds of companies and thousands of people should be changed just for Sun or else... you can not use ZFS. Linux community considered this ultimatum and more-or-less unanimously decided: ZFS is great but... it's just not worth it.

The ire mostly goes not against Sun's ultimatum. It's Sun's right and there are nothing Linux community can do about it (except accept or reject - it rejected it). Sun does not want to see ZFS included in Linux? Fine - we'll not do this. We respect Sun's wish. It's his filesystem Sun and only Sun can decide if he wants to see it in Linux or not. Ire goes against vain tries of Sun engineers to say that it's not an ultimatum and it's goal is not to keep ZFS out of Linux reach. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck... you can be reasonably sure it is a duck.

I'm not sure what game Sun is playing here but to say that everyone else must abandon GPL for unknown reason and claim that "it's not an attack" is just dishonest.

Ok, there are another explanation: Sun honestly believe that it's more important then ALL OTHER companies involved in Linux. Dell, IBM, Intel, Novell, RedHad... all their combined voices weight less then voice of at least one very well-respected engineer. If that's so then honestly I don't even know a psychiatrist who can even hope to cure such an acute megalomania...