[wellylug] OpenSolaris stuff

[Daniel Pittman]

David Harrison <david.harrison at stress-free.co.nz> writes:
> On 15/02/2007, at 9:23 AM, Rob Giltrap wrote:

[...]

> I played around with Nexenta which is OpenSolaris blended with Debian
> and found it very good as well.  It even has support for ZFS for
> playing around with: http://www.gnusolaris.org/gswiki/FAQ
>
> Worth checking out if you want to dip your toe in Solaris whilst
> keeping nicely wrapped in a Debian comfort blanket....

You might want to avoid making any sort of long term commitment to that
platform, however.  Nexenta is, unfortunately, probably violating the
license on a number of core Debian infrastructure tools.

In short, various core tools (including dpkg) are under the GPL, with
copyright retained by the authors[1].  

Linking a GPL package such as dpkg with a non-GPL libc is legally
dubious; real legal experts in various parts of the world have expressed
opinions in both directions.

Real legal experts have also expressed the opinion that the clauses of
the GPL that permit, for example, the linking of an Emacs you compile
yourself with that same libc, do not apply in this case.[2]

Some of the authors, and thus copyright owners, of dpkg and other core
tools have expressed a dislike for Nexenta, or for exceptions to the GPL
for the tools, and *will not* license the tools for use in that
situation.


This is, by the way, the reason that the Debian FreeBSD port uses GNU
libc rather than the BSD libc -- they didn't go against legal advice and
use an incompatibly licensed libc as part of an OS distribution.


Iff OpenSolaris, or at least their libc and associated code, is
relicensed under any version of the GPL[3], then Nexenta will become
legal.

Interestingly, it isn't clear what the cause of the GPL relicense plan
from Sun is -- but it does mean that, effectively, the Debian developers
in question have "won" their fight to have Nexenta a truly free platform
if that eventuates.

Regards,
        Daniel

PS: I think that this really sucked, and that Debian should have been
    fully supportive of their tools on OpenSolaris even under the older
    and less free license.

    Since I didn't write or own the code in question, though, I don't
    get more than an opinion on it. 

Footnotes: 
[1]  As opposed to assigned to the FSF or whatever.

[2]  I am not aware that Nexenta have obtained legal advice themselves.
     Their position has always been "free is free" when they discussed
     this in public.

[3]  dpkg is explicitly licensed under the "or (at your option) any
     later version." version of the GPL grant.

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