Re: ZFS part of Guix? RFC? (Re: Effectively force all GNOME users to locally compile ZFS?)

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 01:32:56PM +0100, pelzflorian (Florian Pelz) wrote:
> Sorry I misunderstood.  I think your claim is that the ZFS decisions
> listed by Ludo i.e. to disallow binary substitutes but to allow
> patches for a ZFS file-system object (once reviewed) are inconsistent.
> Right?
> 
> I don't know if that convinces maintainers to change decisions.
On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 01:51:08PM +0100, zimoun wrote:
> This decision is consistent with the analysis [1] done by Software
> Conservancy Freedom, at least.

I did not speak about one decision.

What I meant is that maybe Denis argued “dynamic linking creates a
derivative work” if and only if “ZFS source code is a derivative
work of Linux”.

Case 1, “ZFS source code is a derivative work of Linux” is true, then
it does not have a valid license, i.e. no free software license.

Case 2, “dynamic linking creates a derivative work” is false, then we
should offer binary substitutes as well.

It would follow that Guix’ decisions are inconsistent.

Then again, from Denis’ new mail,

On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 02:33:00PM +0100, Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli wrote:
> The issue here is that I think that we need to find a valid and
> plausible explanation that makes the ZFS kernel module source code legal
> in a way that doesn't undermine copyleft.

Maybe Denis argued that any support for ZFS is at odds with the FSF
opinion that “dynamic linking creates a derivative work”.

On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 02:33:00PM +0100, Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli wrote:
> So is it legal because zfs-on-linux is distributed as source and that
> the CDDL license incompatible requirements are waived when it is
> distributed as source? And that combining that work with GPLv2 code in
> source form is OK because GPLv2 is not violated because the
> incompatible CDDL requirements are only activated when distributed in
> executable form?

That the CDDL has terms specific to source code distribution
complicates things further and it is hard to tell if copyright law can
even impose all of CDDL’s terms.

Regards,
Florian