I'd already been struggling with how to scope an introduction to the struggle over ZFS licensing and the relative positions of the various players, but this news Friday about open legal battle breaking out between the SFLC and SFC makes this too timely to sit on any further. Suffice to say, for now, that this is one big software freedom question in which the SFLC and SFC had already taken opposed positions.
I then offer these links without much in the way of narrative contextualization or guidance to all those who already are asking "what the actual ...?!" in response to this news of SFLC's filing with the USPTO.
Maybe the filesystem licensing question, or how it's being handled, has fed into recent actions, or maybe not, but like I say, it's been a big, recent, public disagreement between people in the two organizations and so bears considering.
Anwyay, this is what I already had together about the ZFS fracas, more or less, with some tuning-up around btrfs and Red Hat deprecating it.
The discussion in this Hacker News thread on Red Hat ditching btrfs is a decent discussion of the purpose of a distribution. The first comment just sets things up, the reply that starts
I think you're underestimating the stability that such practices provide for enterprise. This is what people pay Redhat for.
is the good part.
The Linux Kernel, CDDL and Related Issues
GPL Violations Related to Combining ZFS and Linux
Interpreting, enforcing and changing the GNU GPL, as applied to combining Linux and ZFS
Some background
Controversy surrounds Red Hat's "obfuscated" source code release
Eben Moglen on GPL Compliance and Building Communities: What Works
Oracle and NetApp dismiss ZFS lawsuits: Let's all hug
SFC's Kuhn in firing line as Linus Torvalds takes aim
image from US National Park Service, used as work of federal government in public domain
