<story><title>Linus: Don&apos;t Use ZFS</title><url>https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=189711&amp;curpostid=189841</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Wowfunhappy</author><text>&amp;gt; And I&amp;#x27;m not at all interested in some &amp;quot;ZFS shim layer&amp;quot; thing either&lt;p&gt;If there is no &amp;quot;approved&amp;quot; method for creating Linux drivers under licenses other than the GPL, that seems like a major problem that Linux should be working to address.&lt;p&gt;Expecting all Linux drivers to be GPL-licensed is unrealistic and just leads to crappy user experiences. nVidia is &lt;i&gt;never&lt;/i&gt; going to release full-featured GPL&amp;#x27;d drivers, and even corporative vendors sometimes have NDAs which preclude releasing open source drivers.&lt;p&gt;Linux is able to run proprietary userspace software. Even most open source zealots agree that this is necessary. Why are all drivers expected to use the GPL?&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;P.S. Never mind the fact that ZFS &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; open source, just not GPL compatible.&lt;p&gt;P.P.S. There&amp;#x27;s a lot of technical underpinnings here that I&amp;#x27;ll readily admit I don&amp;#x27;t understand. If I speak out of ignorance, please feel free to correct me.</text></item><item><author>Jonnax</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s his reasoning:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;honestly, there is no way I can merge any of the ZFS efforts until I get an official letter from Oracle that is signed by their main legal counsel or preferably by Larry Ellison himself that says that yes, it&amp;#x27;s ok to do so and treat the end result as GPL&amp;#x27;d.&lt;p&gt;Other people think it can be ok to merge ZFS code into the kernel and that the module interface makes it ok, and that&amp;#x27;s their decision. But considering Oracle&amp;#x27;s litigious nature, and the questions over licensing, there&amp;#x27;s no way I can feel safe in ever doing so.&lt;p&gt;And I&amp;#x27;m not at all interested in some &amp;quot;ZFS shim layer&amp;quot; thing either that some people seem to think would isolate the two projects. That adds no value to our side, and given Oracle&amp;#x27;s interface copyright suits (see Java), I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s any real licensing win either.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gh123man</author><text>I am also not an expert in this space - but if I understand correctly the reason the linux Nvidia driver sucks so much is that it is not GPL&amp;#x27;d (or open source at all).&lt;p&gt;There is little incentive for Nvidia to maintain a linux specific driver, but because it is closed source the community cannot improve&amp;#x2F;fix it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Why are all drivers expected to use the GPL?&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to this is: drivers are expect to use the GPL if they want to be mainlined and maintained - as Linus said: other than that you are &amp;quot;on your own&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Linus: Don&apos;t Use ZFS</title><url>https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=189711&amp;curpostid=189841</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Wowfunhappy</author><text>&amp;gt; And I&amp;#x27;m not at all interested in some &amp;quot;ZFS shim layer&amp;quot; thing either&lt;p&gt;If there is no &amp;quot;approved&amp;quot; method for creating Linux drivers under licenses other than the GPL, that seems like a major problem that Linux should be working to address.&lt;p&gt;Expecting all Linux drivers to be GPL-licensed is unrealistic and just leads to crappy user experiences. nVidia is &lt;i&gt;never&lt;/i&gt; going to release full-featured GPL&amp;#x27;d drivers, and even corporative vendors sometimes have NDAs which preclude releasing open source drivers.&lt;p&gt;Linux is able to run proprietary userspace software. Even most open source zealots agree that this is necessary. Why are all drivers expected to use the GPL?&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;P.S. Never mind the fact that ZFS &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; open source, just not GPL compatible.&lt;p&gt;P.P.S. There&amp;#x27;s a lot of technical underpinnings here that I&amp;#x27;ll readily admit I don&amp;#x27;t understand. If I speak out of ignorance, please feel free to correct me.</text></item><item><author>Jonnax</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s his reasoning:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;honestly, there is no way I can merge any of the ZFS efforts until I get an official letter from Oracle that is signed by their main legal counsel or preferably by Larry Ellison himself that says that yes, it&amp;#x27;s ok to do so and treat the end result as GPL&amp;#x27;d.&lt;p&gt;Other people think it can be ok to merge ZFS code into the kernel and that the module interface makes it ok, and that&amp;#x27;s their decision. But considering Oracle&amp;#x27;s litigious nature, and the questions over licensing, there&amp;#x27;s no way I can feel safe in ever doing so.&lt;p&gt;And I&amp;#x27;m not at all interested in some &amp;quot;ZFS shim layer&amp;quot; thing either that some people seem to think would isolate the two projects. That adds no value to our side, and given Oracle&amp;#x27;s interface copyright suits (see Java), I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s any real licensing win either.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cryptonector</author><text>ZFS is not really GPL-incompatible either, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter.  Between FUD and Oracle&amp;#x27;s litigiousness, the end result is that there is no way to overcome the impression that it &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; GPL-incompatible.&lt;p&gt;But it is a problem that you can&amp;#x27;t reliably have out-of-tree modules.&lt;p&gt;Also, Linus is wrong: there&amp;#x27;s no reason that the ZoL project can&amp;#x27;t keep the ZFS module in working order, with some lag relative to updates to the Linux mainline, so as long as you stay on supported kernels &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; the ZoL project remains alive, then &lt;i&gt;of course&lt;/i&gt; you can use ZFS.  And you should use ZFS because it&amp;#x27;s awesome.</text></comment>