> 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.
> 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.
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.
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).