On 27/08/2013 04:04, Thomas Mueller wrote: > On the issue of whether ZFS can be shipped with the Linux kernel, FreeBSD > includes ZFS > with the kernel, binary and source. > > So does that mean it would be OK for Linux too?
No. > FreeBSD has a different license (BSD) than Linux (GPL 2 or 3). Please read file COPYING in the kernel sources, the Linux kernel ships with license GPL-2 Not a later version at your choice (2.x) and certainly never GPL-3 The issue is that the Linux kernel devs consider the license terms for ZFS to be incompatible with GPL-2.0 and therefore ZFS cannot be redistributed as a Linux kernel module. There's nothing in the GPL-2 to stop you as a user from building and running ZFS on Linux, as GPL does not interfere with your right to run whatever you wish. The GPL only kicks in when code is redistributed. The BSD license has none of these conditions, in layman terms that license essentially says "you can take this code and pretty much do with it whatever you want, we don't care" > I am not a lawyer! > > Tom > > -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
