More DTrace envy [LWN.net]

More DTrace envy

Posted Jul 3, 2008 22:47 UTC (Thu) by bcantrill (guest, #31087)
In reply to: More DTrace envy by bronson
Parent article: More DTrace envy

You (or rather your friend) is making my point:  the restitutionary damages that she mentions
are the case of Meglocorp shipping GPL'd goober in proprietary product, and Hacker suing for
damages.  That's not the case that was being floated; the assertion was that Meglocorp would
become a Linux copyright holder and then could sue when CDDL'd source was distributed with
the(ir) GPL'd source.  I don't see what the damages are in this case -- compensatory or
restitutionary.  I think if it's flipped around -- Meglocorp ships GPL'd+CDDL'd goober, Hacker
sues because GPL has been violated -- one at least has a case, but I happen to think it's an
extraordinarily weak case: it relies on both an expansive definition of a derived work, and a
creative approach to damages.

More DTrace envy

Posted Jul 4, 2008 0:03 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

> Meglocorp ships GPL'd+CDDL'd goober, Hacker sues because GPL has been violated

Agreed. This is the only one that seems plausible. But proving damages seems to be rather
easy nowadays. And just about anybody involved with Meglocorp could sue; it doesn't have to
be a Linux kernel hacker.

Here's the big-picture problem as I see it: after the SCO disaster, the Linux kernel devs will
not incorporate any code of questionable license status into the kernel. They want to keep
the entire tree completely unencumbered by legal issues. It was a good lesson at a good time.

So, until it can be demonstrated that CDDL and GPL code absolutely can be mixed, they won't
accept CDDL-licensed code into the kernel. it's just too risky.

As far as derived work, while I agree that those parts of the GPL are horribly murky and
untested, I don't think it's very relevant here... Even if someone *could* claim that DTrace
is a derived work (a stretch!), as long as the CDDL+GPL combination is "licensed as a whole at
no charge to all third parties under the terms of [the GPL]" everything is good. If the CDDL
and the GPL are compatible, the terms of the GPL are met, and the whole derived work issue is
moot. (Right?)

To make CDDL+GPL compatible, IIUC the patent issues just need to be resolved the way Mozilla
did with the MPL. Everything else in the CDDL and the GPL is compatible today. (I'm no
expert though so I'd sure value someone else's opinion. That almost sounds too easy!)

It would be nice to see someone reject license prejudices and try to maintain an out-of-tree
DTrace-Linux but... can you imagine? The git-rebases would make the even the heartiest
programmer cower in fear!