I don't think the license can be done retroactively. I mean Oracle owns copyright to major part of ZFS and they can change license to that. But the contributions done to OpenZFS each developer owns copyright to their own work.
I believe the original code could be treated as either CDDL or GPL, but the code that was contributed before license change would still be under CDDL.
I think OpenZFS project owners would need to track down every contributor and get their permission to change the license. Perhaps it wouldn't be terribly hard with git/svn blame command. The only problem would be if the original authors were no longer available, but hopefully that code could be just rewritten by someone else.
Things would be much easier if every author would surrender their copyright to OpenZFS project, but some people might have problem with it since then you surrender all claims to the code.
> Things would be much easier if every author would surrender their copyright to OpenZFS project, but some people might have problem with it since then you surrender all claims to the code.
This is super-dangerous. There's a reason that copyright assignment agreements are rare. In a lot of jurisdictions, it's not even possible.
Most copyright license agreements instead force unlimited sublicensing grants, which provides de facto ownership of the copyrighted code, rather than de jure ownership.
> There's a reason that copyright assignment agreements are rare. In a lot of jurisdictions, it's not even possible.
How is a software development business possible under those circumstances? In the US one of the core pieces of every employment contract (for software developers) is IP assignment.
I can only speak for Germany. Here, we have a big exception to the normal rule that you own the rights and cannot reassign them: everything you create during work hours under a normal employment contract is automatically the property of your employer. Even if you create stuff outisde work that may be useful for the employer, the company has access and may get the rights (for a fair compensation according to the law).
Also, even though you cannot reassign ownership, you can grant exclusive rights. This is the closest analog to assignment of copyright.
Matches my knowledge, except for the following part:
> Even if you create stuff outisde work that may be useful for the employer, the company has access and may get the rights (for a fair compensation according to the law).
I cannot tell you where exactly this stems from in law, but it is roughly the same mechanism as for inventions. If you create or invent something outside of your regular work that may be relevant to your employer, you have an obligation to inform them and offer them rights to it. There are several sources out there (in German) that describe this.
IP assignment itself is a bit of hand-wavy term, that hides a lot.
Those jurisdictions, where you cannot assign authorship, make distinction between being an author and being able to distribute a copyrighted work. It you wrote something, you will be forever the author and you cannot transfer the authorship. What you can transfer is the rights to distribution.
I believe the original code could be treated as either CDDL or GPL, but the code that was contributed before license change would still be under CDDL.
I think OpenZFS project owners would need to track down every contributor and get their permission to change the license. Perhaps it wouldn't be terribly hard with git/svn blame command. The only problem would be if the original authors were no longer available, but hopefully that code could be just rewritten by someone else.
Things would be much easier if every author would surrender their copyright to OpenZFS project, but some people might have problem with it since then you surrender all claims to the code.