Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 16:36:12 -0400 From: "Matthew Emmerton" <matt@gsicomp.on.ca> To: <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: <freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Porting a new filesystem to FreeBSD Message-ID: <003b01c13fb8$6466b6f0$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca> References: <3BA4B507.CC70ECD4@nipsi.de> <20010916140843.A21982@xor.obsecurity.org> <3BA52C79.E1E247F5@mindspring.com> <3BA5419F.BF0C3E70@nipsi.de> <3BA555D8.D2C53387@mindspring.com> <004001c13f1c$bbcc3100$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca> <3BA564AF.BF642E23@mindspring.com>
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> Matthew Emmerton wrote: > > > My bigest problem with it right now is license, since a GPL > > > means that FreeBSD could not use it as a boot FS, which makes > > > the code useless to me. > > > > I can see how FreeBSD would not ship GFS support in the GENERIC kernel > > (which is GPL-clean), but I don't see why the choice of licence would > > prevent anyone from using it as a boot FS. > > I can not install a precompiled kernel that can boot GFS. > > I can not boot an emergency boot floppy which is capable > of mounting and repairing a GFS on a corrupt hard disk. > > I can not distribute a product which relies upon GFS as > the boot file system, since in doing that, I would have to > distribute an illegal binary. > > Since I have generally been working on FreeBSD based embedded > systems for the last four years of my career, and could not > use GFS under the current license in this context, it makes > doing the work rather unintersting to me. It also makes my > employers uninterested in funding my coding time on such a > project. This makes it totally different. The three scenarios you outline above are only problematic when you're trying to support a pre-packaged distribution that supports GFS out-of-the box, as the GPL licence "infects" the entire product. They do not apply to a sysadmin who chooses to switch a production system from UFS to GFS (or JFS) and support it internally. > > This is of great importance to me, since I'm working on porting > > JFS over to FreeBSD, which is GPL'ed code. Not being able to > > have a root device which is journaled significantly reduces the > > appear of having a journaled filesystem available. > > Yes. I contacted the OS/2 JFS people within IBM while I was an > IBM employee for a little over a year, following IBMs acquisition > of Whistle Communications. They were uninterested in releasing > the code under another license, meaning they were willing to shoot > one of their divisions in the foot in order to achieve their own > political and marketing goals. Agreed. With the amount of information I see flying around internally at IBM (where I am employed) and how fanatic they are about preventing GPL pollution with their Linux ports of products, I have to question why they chose to licence various things under the GPL. -- Matt Emmerton To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-fs" in the body of the message
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