SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 17:13 UTC (Mon) by fuhchee (guest, #40059)
In reply to: SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM by gidoca
Parent article: SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

"they don't consider kernel modules derived work"

Whether something is or is not a "derived work" for copyright purposes is not a matter of the author's, nor the license writer's preference. It comes from the law.

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SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 18:17 UTC (Mon) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link] (11 responses)

"Whether something is or is not a "derived work" for copyright purposes is not a matter of the author's, nor the license writer's preference. It comes from the law."

Welcome to the Solaris community.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 18:40 UTC (Mon) by danieldk (guest, #27876) [Link] (10 responses)

License-wise (IllumOS/Joyent/Nexenta) they are stuck in a hard place, thanks to Sun. CDDL provides none of the advantages of non-copyleft licenses (easy re-use in proprietary software), nor benefits that the GPL would give (code sharing with Linux).

Of course, this was exactly Sun's intention, and it goes to show that picking non-standard licenses is not really helping the wider community.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 19:02 UTC (Mon) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link] (9 responses)

Completely wrong. CDDL, differently from GPL, does not have the virality problem, so there is no problem with reusing the code in proprietary software. At the same time, it has all the advantages of copyleft license (it's just a slightly tweaked Mozilla license). Yes, it is impossible to share code with Linux, but that can be said about any license that is not GPL or subset of GPL.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 19:28 UTC (Mon) by danieldk (guest, #27876) [Link] (4 responses)

Completely wrong.

You are stating this as if there is no difference between the CDDL and non-copyleft licenses, which is not true. Any proprietary software vendor would have to release the source code to any CDDL-licensed file, including proprietary modifications.

Yes, it is impossible to share code with Linux, but that can be said about any license that is not GPL or subset of GPL.

Well, some of the other major licenses are compatible with the GPL, such as the modified BSD License and the X11 (MIT) license. Of course, the viral nature will taint, say a BSD operating system.

Anyway, the GPL has been around for ages and CDDL is relatively new. Pretty much everyone agrees that Sun did not use the GPL or a compatible license for the fear of losing an advantage in some areas. That was their right, but their contribution to the FLOSS community should not be overstated. They licensed it in such a way that the code is not really useful outside the OpenSolaris community.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 19:48 UTC (Mon) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes, proprietary software vendor has to release it's modifications to the CDDL code; that's the point of copyleft, after all. However, differently from GPL, at least in Stallman's interpretation, the vendor does not need to release _his_ code that is merely linked with CDDL-ed code.

As for the GPL compatibility - MIT and modified BSD are subset of GPL.

As for the usefulness: licensing OpenSolaris under GPL would make it useless to everyone except Linux community, and Linux developers probably wouldn't accept the code anyway due to NIH. By licensing it under CDDL they made the code available for pretty much everyone, including e.g. MacOS X, and even Linux: using CDDL-ed kernel module is not in any way more problematic than using closed source kernel module.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 19:58 UTC (Mon) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link] (2 responses)

As for the usefulness: licensing OpenSolaris under GPL would make it useless to everyone except Linux community, and Linux developers probably wouldn't accept the code anyway due to NIH. By licensing it under CDDL they made the code available for pretty much everyone, including e.g. MacOS X, and even Linux: using CDDL-ed kernel module is not in any way more problematic than using closed source kernel module.

You lost me here. The parent comment regarded the decision to conflict with the GPL, not about changing from CDDL to GPL. Your "NIH" comment is an unfortunate non-sequitur.

Binary modules are very problematic for Linux distributors and users. If the module is not binary but under a conflicting license the situation is slightly better, only in that you can see the code if you were so inclined to look. That still would not make maintenance, distribution, or a user's life any easier.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 20:13 UTC (Mon) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link] (1 responses)

Ah, I assumed you were talking about releasing the code under GPL, not about making CDDL GPL-compatible. But again - the only way to make CDDL GPL-compatible would be to make it a subset of GPL, it couldn't include the nice patent protection it has now, for example.

As for binary modules - yes, they are a problem, but it's just an annoyance. Releasing the code under GPL instead of CDDL would make it impossible to e.g. include DTrace in OSX - not "inconvenient", but just impossible, at least according to Stallman's interpretation of GPL.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 22:25 UTC (Mon) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

Surely the code could be dual-licensed under the GPL and the CDDL.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 16, 2011 9:04 UTC (Tue) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link] (3 responses)

(...) the virality problem (...)

Could you please refrain from using this word? You get viruses against your will and they try to destroy you, whereras you choose to derive from GPL code and I fail to see that destroy anybody.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 16, 2011 20:13 UTC (Tue) by jone (guest, #62596) [Link]

Actually, I think they misspelled virility .. while the code and ideas are quite high caliber, I've always felt that due to the CDDL [open]solaris have historically suffered from an impotence problem with a slight overcompensation by bragging about their 64 bit structures and large disk drives. :)

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 17, 2011 2:43 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (1 responses)

Just an unrelated aside. The implied evil of viruses is your own cultural predication. A properly evolved virus doesn't kill the host or really even harm them, in fact a virus that results in death is a virus that isn't very good at it's job. The human genome is littered with the DNA of Viruses from the past that got their DNA incorporated into our own permanently. If the virus kills the host they've eliminated a transmission vector and hurt their own survival prospect. A virus that's good at it's job succeeds in infecting every possible host without damage to the host, thus ensuring permanent survival of the DNA/RNA.

Viruses and disease are a natural evil in Human language but modern science has revealed the virus to be a very flexible organism. Some of those are beneficial and helpful. In the same vein a "viral" GPL isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just depends on perspective.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 17, 2011 21:35 UTC (Wed) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

It's bad in that it's inaccurate.

Viruses propogate without permission from their host. That's very much what the phrase is used to imply is going on.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 19:06 UTC (Mon) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link] (11 responses)

Actually, license can play a role here. CDDL, for example, clearly defines that things merely linked with the CDDL-ed code are not considered derived work, thus avoiding potential virality.

As for the Linux kernel modules - that's not clear either. It would be silly to consider e.g. nVidia drivers or the code VMWare ESX puts into the kernel a derived work.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 19:44 UTC (Mon) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link] (4 responses)

"clearly defines that things merely linked with the CDDL-ed code are not considered derived work"

It doesn't matter what they clearly define. They don't own the definition, the law does. For works that are not "derived works" in the copyright law sense, the license is apprx. irrelevant.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 19:51 UTC (Mon) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link] (2 responses)

It does matter: for works that are not derived work in the copyright law sense, the license is irrelevant, but for work that could be derived work, the license _is_ relevant. The problem with GPL is that the law does not state clearly whether stuff merely linked with GPL-ed code constitutes derived work; CDDL solves the problem by explicitly saying it does not apply to the "merely linked" stuff.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 17, 2011 15:09 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (1 responses)

Exactly as murky as the GPL case. What the heck is "merely linked"? To find out what functions/data I can use from "the other side" presumably I have to study it. Whatever I write and compile to "merely link" won't be able to stand on it's own, and would be completely useless in the next operating system (or even a few versions later of the same). So the argument that it isn't derived is pretty thin. Sure, it could be non-derived (just as in the GPL case), but in most cases it will be a bona fide derived work.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 17, 2011 18:17 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]

The "merely linked" wording is my own. CDDL is very specific here, see my other comment above. It makes it very clear that it only applies to files copyrighted under CDDL or containing code taken from files copyrighted under CDDL. This makes it very different from GPL, which, according to RMS, applies also to everything linked with files copyrighted under GPL, i.e. the phenomenon often called "virality".

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 20:05 UTC (Mon) by allan1015 (guest, #78373) [Link]

>>>It doesn't matter what they clearly define. They don't own the definition, the law does

Ah yes as the last poster commented - that view is while ideal a bit naive as the 'law' lends absolutely no guidance on GPL derived works/copyleft.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 19:48 UTC (Mon) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]

Similar to NVidia binary drivers in Linux, one concern would regard the permissibility of distributing binaries of conflicting licenses.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 15, 2011 22:18 UTC (Mon) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link] (2 responses)

"thus avoiding potential virality."

Do we have to have this "virality" guff? It's being used very spuriously. I've never known of a virus that requires you to voluntarily choose to use it before it infects you.

It just makes you look like you've got an agenda.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 16, 2011 20:21 UTC (Tue) by jone (guest, #62596) [Link]

perhaps that should read .. "thus avoiding potential virility" .. maybe trasz is just a bit jealous of the reproductive effectiveness the linux codebase has already had .. :)

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 18, 2011 14:42 UTC (Thu) by seyman (subscriber, #1172) [Link]

Agreed. When describing Linux's license, I use "transitivity" when talking to people with a scientific background and "hereditary" in all other cases. Both terms describe the GPL's effects far better than "virality"

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 27, 2011 3:35 UTC (Sat) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link] (1 responses)

As for the Linux kernel modules - that's not clear either. It would be silly to consider e.g. nVidia drivers or the code VMWare ESX puts into the kernel a derived work.

No, it wouldn't be silly to do that. In fact, that's precisely why proprietary drivers like nvidia's can not be distributed WITH the kernel. Combining the two produces a derived work.

That's something that an end-user is free to do on their own machines (since they're not distributing the combined result, the GPL's rules on redistribution of derived works does not apply. The GPL restricts redistribution, not usage.)

BUT - and here's the catch - a distributor (such as debian or redhat or anyone else) can not do that. They can not re-distribute the combined work under terms compatible with the GPL so they are not permitted to re-distribute it at all.

At best, they can create an installer package which makes it more convenient for an end-user to download, patch the kernel and/or compile the module, and install it. as, for example, debian does with the nvidia-kernel-dkms package in the debian non-free archive. This actually works quite well in practice and is no more inconvenient to the end-user than similar dkms packages for GPL-compatible kernel modules that aren't part of the mainline kernel - e.g. oss4-dkms, blcr-dkms, xtables-addons-dkms and others.

(btw, this is NOT a bug in the GPL. it's a feature. its purpose is to prevent hijacking GPL-ed code into proprietary software)

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 27, 2011 11:10 UTC (Sat) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link]

"Combining the two produces a derived work."

But then the question becomes what's "combining" in this context: shipping on the same installation DVD? or installation server?

It's nice that most OSS companies tend to respect an expansive reading of all these issues, to avoid litigation risks and alienating developers. But don't mistake that for legal clarity of the situation.

SmartOS (based on IllumOS) released - with KVM

Posted Aug 16, 2011 21:27 UTC (Tue) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link]

The author (really the copyright owner) has no say in this, the law (really a court as the law itself is silent on this point) determines what a derived work is in such a murky case. If they load the Linux module into a modified Solaris kernel, maybe the modifications to Solaris are, perhaps they aren't.

The copyright owners could approve of this use, giving a special exception for this, in case the law says it is a derived work.

Or SmartOS could just play dumb and forge ahead expecting nobody with a standing will complain...