More DTrace envy
More DTrace envy
Posted Jul 4, 2008 0:03 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806)In reply to: More DTrace envy by bcantrill
Parent article: More DTrace envy
> 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!
