Re: ZFS imported into GRUB

[KESHAV P.R.]

What about other grub-extras?

Lua is under MIT license. Although I am not well versed in all these
licensing/legal issues, isn't MIT license compatible with GPL.

gPXE/Etherboot is under GPL2.

915resolution and ntldr-img (which is grub4dos functionality - right?)
are under GPL3 (COPYING files in the respective repos).

Many users and packagers don't know about the existence of
grub-extras, especially about lua and zfs. If there are no legal
issues there is no point in keeping them in separate repos. Regards.

Keshav

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 16:54, Robert Millan <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Following our new strategy with regard to Oracle code, we (GRUB
> maintainers) have decided to grant an exception to our usual policy and
> import ZFS code from grub-extras into official GRUB.
>
> Our usual policy is to require copyright assignment for all new code, so
> that FSF can use it to defend users' freedom in court.  If that's not
> possible, at least a disclaimer asserting authorship (i.e. that no
> copyright infringement has been committed).  The purpose of this, as
> always, is ensuring that GRUB is a legally safe codebase.
>
> The ZFS code that has been imported into GRUB derives from the
> OpenSolaris version of GRUB Legacy.  On one hand, this code was released
> to the public under the terms of the GNU GPL.  On the other, binary
> releases of Solaris included this modified GRUB, and as a result
> Oracle/Sun is bound by the GPL.
>
> We believe that these two factors give us very strong reassurance that:
>
> a) Oracle owns the copyright to this code
> and
> b) Oracle is licensing it under GPL
>
> and therefore it is completely safe to use this in GRUB.
>
> We're looking forward to this code import will foster collaboration on
> ZFS support for GRUB.  Our understanding is that next version of
> Solaris will ship with GRUB 2, and so we expect the whole OpenSolaris
> ecosystem to do this move as well.  We encourage downstream distributors
> to anticipate this by preparing their transition from the old, legacy
> version of GRUB (0.97) which is no longer supported by GRUB developers.
>
>
> Finally, a word about patents.  Software patents are terribly harmful to
> free software, and to IT in general.  We believe they should be
> abolished.  However, until that happens, we need to take measures to
> protect our users.  We recognize it is practically impossible for end
> users to archieve a situation where they're completely safe from patent
> infringement (even if they pay so-called "patent taxes" to specific
> companies).
>
> However, we encourage our users to make careful choices when importing
> technology that is designed in an in-door development model (rather
> than in the community), because it's prone to be heavily patented.
>
> This is the reason why, when we (the GNU project) developed the GPL, we
> included certain provisions in it to ensure a patent holder can't
> benefit from the freedoms we gave them and at the same time use patents
> to undermine these freedoms for others.
>
> Thanks to this, and due to the fact that Oracle is bound to the terms
> of the GNU GPL when it comes to GRUB, we believe this renders patents
> covering ZFS basically harmless to GRUB users.  If the patents
> covering GRUB are held by Oracle, they can't use them against GRUB
> users, and if they're held by other parties, the GPL provisions will
> prevent Oracle from paying a tax only for themselves, so if they will
> fight alongside the community instead of betraying it.
>
> Let this serve as yet another example on why so-called "permissive"
> licenses aren't always a guarantee that the code covered by them can be
> used freely.  If you intend for your code to be free for all users,
> always use the latest version of the GPL.
>
> --
> Robert Millan
>
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