What matters in practice isn't the law, but how much trouble Oracle could cause should the lawnmower veer in that direction. Even a complete rewrite of ZFS would have some risk associated with it given Oracle's history.
> What matters in practice isn't the law, but how much trouble Oracle could cause should the lawnmower veer in that direction.
Veer in what direction? The current state of affairs re: Canonical and Oracle is a ZFS binary kernel module shipped with the Linux kernel. Canonical has literally done the thing that which you are speculating is impermissible. And, for 8 years, Oracle has done nothing. Oracle's attorneys have even publicly disagreed with the SFC that a ZFS binary kernel module violates the GPL or the CDDL.[0]
Given this state of affairs, the level of legal certainty re: this question is far greater than the legal certainty we have re: pretty much any other open IP question in tech.
What matters is practice, is that you stop your/the SFC's/the FSF's torrent of FUD.
> Even a complete rewrite of ZFS would have some risk associated with it given Oracle's history.
I'd ask "How?", but it'd be another torrent of "What if..."s.
I said that what matters is not the law, to which you responded by doubling down on your argument about what the law says, accused me of disagreeing with you on an issue I did not take a position on, and then went for the personal attacks.
In case my lawnmower reference confused you enough that you were unable to make an appropriate response to the point I actually made, I'll try to state it a bit more clearly:
It does not matter how confident you are that Oracle would eventually lose a lawsuit over using or distributing ZFS with the Linux kernel. If Oracle decides to attempt to exert control over ZFS and interfere with the use or distribution of ZFS with Linux, they have ample resources to make a lot of very expensive trouble for various users and organizations. Oracle's history—most importantly, their history vs Google re Java in Android—means it would not be much of a stretch for them to decide to start behaving like The SCO Group. I do not think this risk is large. But I do think it is a real risk that a cautious Linux distro can reasonably be worried about.
If you truly believe that Oracle's lack of action thus far against ZFS on Linux and their public statements of their beliefs about the effects of the CDDL and GPL would prevent them from starting shit, then you are simply wrong about how our legal system works, and there are plenty of examples. The things you point to to bolster your arguments about what the law says are things that would make it hard for Oracle to win a lawsuit on its merits, but the eventual judgement is hardly the only thing that matters when assessing a legal risk—especially if your pockets are not as deep as Oracle's.
> I do not think this risk is large. But I do think it is a real risk that a cautious Linux distro can reasonably be worried about.
The 2nd or 3rd most commercially important Linux distro has been using ZFS since 2016.
> If you truly believe that Oracle's lack of action thus far against ZFS on Linux and their public statements of their beliefs about the effects of the CDDL and GPL would prevent them from starting shit
I understand the argument "Oracle might do something", plus spooky magic fingers and creepy noises, all too well. Except it's not actually an argument. It might be best described as a boogeyman, sent to frighten little children into not running ZFS.
My point was: I think it's time for you to get over sleeping with the light on.
In 2000, we called this FUD when Microsoft did this. In 2024, we should know better, even when you're fronting for the FSF or the SFC.
