> > For example, Gentoo Linux, another community driven distribution, cannot and will not redistribute proprietary software at all.

> This is quite a poorly chosen example since Gentoo will not ship binaries period. To this day I don't think there is an official host for binary packages (binhost).

This is incorrect. The original statement by the blogger, though a bit ambiguous, is technically entirely correct.

While shipping binary packages is not the norm for Gentoo, some binary packages are available and Gentoo absolutely does provide and redistribute a selected number of binary packages (not as binhost but as ebuilds). Examples including firefox-bin, icedtea-bin, chromium-bin, or pypy-bin. The tarballs of these binary packages are built by Gentoo developers and hosted on the official Gentoo servers and mirrors.

On the other hand, the official Portage package manager also has many proprietary software available for installation. But in this case, only the ebuild script can be hosted, putting the actual tarballs on official Gentoo servers and mirrors is strictly prohibited. Only the raw upstream source can be used. A common example is Google Chrome. Another peculiar one is Oracle JRE/JDK - for a long time, the Gentoo ebuild was not even allowed to automatically download Oracle Java. Instead, the ebuild asks the user going to Oracle, agreeing with the license, and downloading it manually and putting it into Portage's cache. All because of legal requirements that must be obeyed by Gentoo.

This is what the author mean by Gentoo "cannot and will not redistribute proprietary software at all".

> The original statement by the blogger, though a bit ambiguous, is technically entirely correct.

Still, it is misleading at best. First, because the entire contention is from open but patent-encumbered software (codecs) rather than outright non-distributable binaries. And second, because I'm assuming these *-bin packages are the exception, rather than the rule (e.g., same as the Gentoo LiveCD contents), so it's malicious to point it as an example of anything.

Gentoo is still (mostly) a source-based distribution, and when you finish the default install, you end up with a system that contains patent-encumbered software and can play/encode H264 out of the box. And render Truetype points, etc. IANAL, but it is dubious that the patent owner would make a difference based on whether the system was distributed as binaries or as "source code + automated build scripts", but apparently that is what the distro decided.

A much better example for the article to use would have been SuSE, which, despite being set in Europe, practically follows Fedora's reluctance to ship patent-encumbered software to the letter. In fact, SuSE has already followed Fedora on the choice to cripple Mesa (which is what triggered TFA).

But even choosing SUSE as an example would (conveniently) leave a big elephant on the room: Ubuntu. While perhaps not in the default install, Ubuntu is literally one click away from giving you access to all kinds of patent-encumbered software (via a prominent checkbox visible on the first dialog of the setup program, not a 3rd party mirror or anything). And as mentioned, even Debian is not as much on the "afraid" side as as Fedora is.

So different distributions do have different interpretations/responses to the same law in the same jurisdiction, making the entire "Law Compliance Cannot Be Voted" argument easily proved wrong. Heck, even the different distros' legal teams often give different advice...

> And render Truetype points

IIRC it's ClearType that have (at the time, they're expired now) patent issues, not TrueType. While there were patents for TrueType, it's not intentionally enforced.

No, it's really TrueType. Font hinting. I don't know if the patents were not enforced at all, but it was a headache for many years since many distros would cripple truetype renderers. Never used cleartype or any type of RGB subpixel rendering since it prevents rotating the displays.

> Even Debian/Ubuntu is a bit more towards the don't care side (albeit not by much). Their stance with e.g. the openSSL EC patents comes to mind: Fedora decided to cripple OpenSSL here (hobble_openssl patchset) but Debian did not.

I remember Ubuntu also causing a bit of a stir when they announced that they were going to add an option to their installer to allow users to use ZFS (which is considered to be licensed in a way incompatible with Linux although not closed-source). Most things I read about it at the time seemed to predict that they would not get away with it, but I don't think I ever heard anything about it again afterwards (although I don't personally use Ubuntu so I don't know if they did in fact go through with it or if it's still included in their installer today).

> although I don't personally use Ubuntu so I don't know if they did in fact go through with it or if it's still included in their installer today

It is. And it is interesting, and promising, that Oracle hasn't sued them; whether that's because Oracle somehow hasn't noticed (or their legal arm hasn't, anyways), doesn't care (read: can't see the profit), or actually thinks it's above board, I couldn't say.

What surprises me the most about the fact that Oracle apparently is fine with this is that they could very easily have just updated ZFS's license (or add an alternative alongside the existing one) to make it fully compatible with Linux at any point since getting ownership of it through their Sun acquisition. It seemed like an intentional decision not to do so, but I guess it is possible they somehow have been oblivious to all of this the entire time.

Oh, yeah, that whole thing is maddening. Oracle is a major user of Linux; they could have just made the ZFS code properly, formally GPLv2 compatible and merged it in and overnight have an amazing storage system in OEL. Instead, they just... sat on it. Ugh.

I imagine they sat on it, so that if they needed to strongarm someone using it.. they could. Red Hat would be their immediate target to bend over.

> but I guess it is possible they somehow have been oblivious to all of this the entire time.

It's possible their licensing lawyers have a long todo list and researching what to do with Ubuntu is not the highest priority yet. It took them quite a while before they started contacting companies about the virtualbox extensions usage.

Or, much more likely, they face the fact that they have no leg to stand on, which was intentional in CDDL design from the get go.

Any licensing challenges regarding ZFS in Linux come from GPL people lawyering about derivative code and whether it applies.

Oracle ZFS and OpenZFS by now are separate things and Oracle changing license from their proprietary one to another wouldn't impact OpenZFS.

Remember, Oracle changed their license back to proprietary closed source.

Yeah. ZFS on root is the primary reason I'm still continuing to use Ubuntu.

Hopefully the Kubuntu installer decides to incorporate it at some point, so I can just use that for desktops instead of standard Ubuntu with KDE installed afterwards. :)

My understanding was that, by bundling zfs and linux, you would be infringing on GPL and not on CDDL. Isn't it? If that's the case, Oracle wouldn't be able to sue them, that would be up to the linux developers.

And that depends on whether you can prove that the CDDL code is derivative of GPLv2 code.