Re: Sun's ZFS and Linux

[Nix <nix@esperi.org.uk>]

On 20 Nov 2005, Tarkan Erimer yowled:
> On 11/19/05, Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
>> That wouldn't be a "port", it would have to be a complete
>> reimplementation from scratch.  And, of course, of further concern
>> would be whether or not there are any patents that Sun may have filed
>> covering ZFS.  If the patents have only been licensed for CDDL
>> licensed code, then that won't help a GPL'ed covered reimplementation.
> 
> Thanks for the explanation. BTW, I wonder something: Is there any
> possibility to give GPL an exception to include and/or link to CDDL
> code?

You'd have to get agreement from *all* the kernel's past
contributors. As some of them are dead this is not likely to happen.

(Well, OK, you could isolate their code and rewrite it but this
would be a big and annoying job, so you'd need a very compelling
reason. One extra filesystem isn't likely to be good enough.)

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