I'm surprised no one has mentioned the extremely relevant precedent set by Age of Empires III. Although I exclusively run GNU/Linux now, at the time of Age of Empires III's release in November of 2005 I was running Windows 2000 Pro with no intention of ever using Windows XP. This isn't the time or place to discuss why I refused to use XP, but suffice to say that my experience getting AoE III to work foreshadowed what was to come in any Microsoft published game.
Being a fan of the earlier Age of Empires games, I acquired a copy of the newly released AoE III which turned out to list Windows XP as the only supported operating system. To my extreme (albeit momentary) dismay, running the setup.exe on the first game disc produced an error requiring an upgrade to Windows XP before installing the game. I simply refused to believe it, seeing as how 2000 and XP are extremely similar operating systems and that there's no technical reason this game would require one and not work on the other.
Five minutes of Googling later, I ran the setup.exe from the command prompt, passing the "/n" command line switch to the executable. This switch runs the game setup in network install mode: the setup program believes it is installing the game over a network, so it doesn't check the operating system version! Needless to say I just pointed the installer to a local directory and it installed without a hitch.
Even better is that the main game executable didn't require any patching. Directly after installation, the game ran perfectly under Windows 2000! Only the setup.exe on the game disc had the farse "XP-only" restriction, and a simple trick, built-in to the executable no less, proved that the operating system requirement was merely a shallow marketing decision by Microsoft to force people on to Windows XP.
This anecdote might be interesting for those who haven't played AoE III (or haven't tried getting it to run on another OS besides XP). It has taught me to never trust a game published by Microsoft, and because of my experience, as soon as I heard that Halo 2 PC was going to be Vista-only many months ago I instantly knew that it would be a superficial hack akin to the OS check on the AoE III setup.exe.
Of course there are going to be people who relish in being able to break this superficial and shallow marketing decision, but I'd like to send a big THANK YOU out to those who actually put the time and effort into doing so.
The Right Thing(tm) is to keep the license as it is. It ensures the Solaris code has to be shared (like the GPL), but doesn't pollute source code around it
No. First off, do not turn this into a continuation of the debate of which is more Free: copyleft licenses such as the GPL, or BSD-style "our code is SO free you can make it NON-free!". This specific situation is much simpler: Linux has been GPLv2 licensed for about 15 years now, and the GPL itself is much older than that. Sun created the CDDL in the 2000's (not sure which year exactly) and has thereby acheived deliberate license incompatability with Linux and the GPL. There are other non-copyleft licenses which are GPL-compatible that Sun could have chosen, but they didn't: not that there's anything inherently wrong with this of course, it's their decision. Also, the GPL is NOT "incompatible with anything other than itself" like you state, check this list to find all the licenses that disprove this wildly inaccurate statement.
It is not inherently Right or Wrong to use the CDDL for ZFS or the rest of Solaris. Sun holds the copyright on that code, so Sun can choose to license those projects however they see fit. It is not your place to say what license is correct for Sun to use on their code. Perhaps to your dismay, Sun has been seriously considering GPLv3 for Solaris, much like they did with Java and the GPLv2. And for all your talk about Linux "pillaging" code from Sun, you conveniently forget that this was a main driving reason for Sun to license Java under the GPLv2: license compatibility with GNU/Linux for easy inclusion of Java technology in distributions to attract users and developers.
( GPL - viral clause = CDDL. Same license as firefox, or apache)
While the CDDL was originally based on the Mozilla Public License, it is not the same thing. Perhaps more importantly though, Firefox is tri-licensed under the MPL, LGPL, and yes, the GPL. I can get a copy of Firefox licensed under the GPL, so it's especially important not to mislead others into thinking that such a prominent Free Software project exclusively uses a non-copyleft license, the CDDL, which isn't even one of the three licenses Firefox uses in the first place! Oh, and Apache has its own license altogether, albeit a non-copyleft one, the Apache license.
Nobody can say for certain if ZFS will see a legal implementation directly in the Linux kernel, but I think it's fairly obvious that the largest barrier to doing so is a legal one. The summary is worded such that it does not exclude the possibility of the licensing barrier being overcome, which I personally believe will happen. You mentioned at the end of your comment what is in my mind the most likely scenario that would yield full inclusion of ZFS in the Linux kernel: both projects being relicensed (dual-licensed?) under the GPLv3.
I for one didn't quite believe Sun when they made their initial casual talks about deciding to license Java under the GPLv2, but look what happened with that: they followed through, with the primary intention to see Java be as widespread as possible and attract more users and developers. In Sun's perspective, and as they've publicly stated, the fact that their Java technology can now (well, almost) be included by default in any GNU/Linux distribution which chooses to do so was a huge selling point for choosing the GPLv2.
Now Sun has been talking about dual-licensing Solaris under the GPLv3 in addition to the CDDL. Sun sees the GNU/Linux train taking off from the station and doesn't want to miss it: that's why they GPLed Java and that's why they'll probably do the same for Solaris. In addition to this, Linus Torvalds has already stated that ZFS under the GPLv3 is perhaps a good enough reason to relicense the kernel: "maybe ZFS is worthwhile enough that
I'm willing to go to the effort of trying to relicense the kernel."
So in summary, we have Sun seriously considering GPLv3 for Solaris, and if they follow through in totality, we have Linus seriously considering starting the move to GPLv3 license Linux, and we also have all of the GNU projects moving to GPLv3 at the hand of the FSF. And the patents Sun has on ZFS? Already taken care of in the GPLv3! Now we just need the licensed to be released....
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned the extremely relevant precedent set by Age of Empires III. Although I exclusively run GNU/Linux now, at the time of Age of Empires III's release in November of 2005 I was running Windows 2000 Pro with no intention of ever using Windows XP. This isn't the time or place to discuss why I refused to use XP, but suffice to say that my experience getting AoE III to work foreshadowed what was to come in any Microsoft published game.
Being a fan of the earlier Age of Empires games, I acquired a copy of the newly released AoE III which turned out to list Windows XP as the only supported operating system. To my extreme (albeit momentary) dismay, running the setup.exe on the first game disc produced an error requiring an upgrade to Windows XP before installing the game. I simply refused to believe it, seeing as how 2000 and XP are extremely similar operating systems and that there's no technical reason this game would require one and not work on the other.
Five minutes of Googling later, I ran the setup.exe from the command prompt, passing the "/n" command line switch to the executable. This switch runs the game setup in network install mode: the setup program believes it is installing the game over a network, so it doesn't check the operating system version! Needless to say I just pointed the installer to a local directory and it installed without a hitch.
Even better is that the main game executable didn't require any patching. Directly after installation, the game ran perfectly under Windows 2000! Only the setup.exe on the game disc had the farse "XP-only" restriction, and a simple trick, built-in to the executable no less, proved that the operating system requirement was merely a shallow marketing decision by Microsoft to force people on to Windows XP.
This anecdote might be interesting for those who haven't played AoE III (or haven't tried getting it to run on another OS besides XP). It has taught me to never trust a game published by Microsoft, and because of my experience, as soon as I heard that Halo 2 PC was going to be Vista-only many months ago I instantly knew that it would be a superficial hack akin to the OS check on the AoE III setup.exe.
Of course there are going to be people who relish in being able to break this superficial and shallow marketing decision, but I'd like to send a big THANK YOU out to those who actually put the time and effort into doing so.
No. First off, do not turn this into a continuation of the debate of which is more Free: copyleft licenses such as the GPL, or BSD-style "our code is SO free you can make it NON-free!". This specific situation is much simpler: Linux has been GPLv2 licensed for about 15 years now, and the GPL itself is much older than that. Sun created the CDDL in the 2000's (not sure which year exactly) and has thereby acheived deliberate license incompatability with Linux and the GPL. There are other non-copyleft licenses which are GPL-compatible that Sun could have chosen, but they didn't: not that there's anything inherently wrong with this of course, it's their decision. Also, the GPL is NOT "incompatible with anything other than itself" like you state, check this list to find all the licenses that disprove this wildly inaccurate statement.
It is not inherently Right or Wrong to use the CDDL for ZFS or the rest of Solaris. Sun holds the copyright on that code, so Sun can choose to license those projects however they see fit. It is not your place to say what license is correct for Sun to use on their code. Perhaps to your dismay, Sun has been seriously considering GPLv3 for Solaris, much like they did with Java and the GPLv2. And for all your talk about Linux "pillaging" code from Sun, you conveniently forget that this was a main driving reason for Sun to license Java under the GPLv2: license compatibility with GNU/Linux for easy inclusion of Java technology in distributions to attract users and developers.
While the CDDL was originally based on the Mozilla Public License, it is not the same thing. Perhaps more importantly though, Firefox is tri-licensed under the MPL, LGPL, and yes, the GPL. I can get a copy of Firefox licensed under the GPL, so it's especially important not to mislead others into thinking that such a prominent Free Software project exclusively uses a non-copyleft license, the CDDL, which isn't even one of the three licenses Firefox uses in the first place! Oh, and Apache has its own license altogether, albeit a non-copyleft one, the Apache license.
Nobody can say for certain if ZFS will see a legal implementation directly in the Linux kernel, but I think it's fairly obvious that the largest barrier to doing so is a legal one. The summary is worded such that it does not exclude the possibility of the licensing barrier being overcome, which I personally believe will happen. You mentioned at the end of your comment what is in my mind the most likely scenario that would yield full inclusion of ZFS in the Linux kernel: both projects being relicensed (dual-licensed?) under the GPLv3.
I for one didn't quite believe Sun when they made their initial casual talks about deciding to license Java under the GPLv2, but look what happened with that: they followed through, with the primary intention to see Java be as widespread as possible and attract more users and developers. In Sun's perspective, and as they've publicly stated, the fact that their Java technology can now (well, almost) be included by default in any GNU/Linux distribution which chooses to do so was a huge selling point for choosing the GPLv2.
Now Sun has been talking about dual-licensing Solaris under the GPLv3 in addition to the CDDL. Sun sees the GNU/Linux train taking off from the station and doesn't want to miss it: that's why they GPLed Java and that's why they'll probably do the same for Solaris. In addition to this, Linus Torvalds has already stated that ZFS under the GPLv3 is perhaps a good enough reason to relicense the kernel: "maybe ZFS is worthwhile enough that I'm willing to go to the effort of trying to relicense the kernel."
So in summary, we have Sun seriously considering GPLv3 for Solaris, and if they follow through in totality, we have Linus seriously considering starting the move to GPLv3 license Linux, and we also have all of the GNU projects moving to GPLv3 at the hand of the FSF. And the patents Sun has on ZFS? Already taken care of in the GPLv3! Now we just need the licensed to be released....