Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

Ingo Molnar
2007-06-11T09:04:16Z

* Tarkan Erimer <tarkan@netone.net.tr> wrote:

> > (*) And I've been pushing for that since before they even released
> > it - I walked out on Bill Joy at a private event where they
> > discussed their horrible previous Java license.
>
> Thanks for making things more clear :-) Some really strong indications
> that Sun is very willing to,at least, "Dual-License" the OpenSolaris
> with GPLv3. I think; in a very short time; we will see when the GPLv3
> finalized and released.

that would certainly be a good and productive move from them. Note the
issue that others have pointed out to you: OpenSolaris is probably more
interested in picking up code from Linux than the other way around! :-)
You mentioned "dtrace" and "ZFS". Firstly, Linux already has a "dtrace"
equivalent. Secondly, ZFS might be interesting in theory, although our
prior experience of having compatibly-licensed filesystems ported over
to Linux has been pretty negative: XFS ended up being an integration
nightmare - and that doesnt have to do anything with the qualities of
XFS (it's one of the cleanest Linux filesystems, if not the cleanest),
the problem is that components within a kernel are very tightly
integrated and rarely does it make sense to port over more than just
drivers or maybe libraries. And that's i guess what OpenSolaris lacks
and which i suspect it is mostly interested in: lots of nice Linux
drivers ;-) XFS, the largest Linux filesystem is 100K lines of code -
and ZFS (i've never seen it) is very likely smaller than that. Linux
drivers on the other hand, as of today, are _3.7 million_ lines of code
and enable Linux to run on 99% of the hardware that is produced today.
Guess which one has the larger strategic significance? ;-)

Ingo