Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 15:22:28 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: hiten@uk.FreeBSD.org Cc: Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org>, Chris Mason <mason@suse.com>, Josh MacDonald <jmacd@CS.Berkeley.EDU>, Parity Error <bootup@mail.ru>, freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.org, reiserfs-dev@namesys.com Subject: Re: [reiserfs-dev]i Re: metadata update durability ordering/soft updates Message-ID: <3C9676B4.49A76589@mindspring.com> References: <20020318174641.A1153@hpdi.ath.cx>
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Hiten Pandya wrote: > So from what you are saying, I can (if I wanted to 8-)) port ReiserFS > to FreeBSD, under the GPL License, but that would be of no point, > because it cannot be used as a boot FS unless a royalty was paid to > the Hans for the rights, right? :) You would have to buy him out of the GPL license for your application. It'd probably be cheaper to buy out a BSD use specific license, than to buy it into a pure BSD license, so that e.g. Microsoft could not use the the code without a royalty. It's going to be more expensive than you might think, though, since the embedded systems market he appears to be targetting for licensees uses a lot of BSD these days. Note that the same argument goes for your JFS port project to FreeBSD, since the JFS is under GPL. You would have to deal with IBM on that one. I also have to tell you that, as an employee of a division of IBM using FreeBSD in an embedded system, I tried very hard to get an alternate license on JFS, for binary redistribution in the product, but they wanted "play money" (internal funds transfer) for a full license, just as if we were an outside party interested in the code. For my money, you are better off paying Hans. > I don't understand one thing though, what are we doing in the case of > Ext2FS, which is supported in FreeBSD. As far as I know, the Ext2FS > version of FreeBSD has also got some GPL'ed bits? The Ext2FS is > supplied as a source filesystem on FreeBSD CD-ROMs and people are > allowed to sell them... It's supplied as source code only, not compiled into the kernel byt the FreeBSD project, and therefore not impacting the FreeBSD license. See /usr/src/sys/gnu/ext2fs/COPYRIGHT.INFO: | Most of the files in this directory are written by Godmar Back or modified | by him using the CSRG sources. Those files are covered by the Berkeley-style | copyright. However the following files are covered by GPL. Since the policy | of the FreeBSD project is to keep the files with the more restrictive | copyright in the gnu tree and it is a good idea to keep the filesystem code | all together, the EXT2FS in its entirety resides under the gnu tree. Note | that only the files below are under the GPL. In the eventuality that these | files are redesigned or rewritten, this tree can be moved back into the less | restrictive FreeBSD tree. > Wouldn't this be the same thing in the case of a GPL'ed ReiserFS, > XFS or any other GPL'ed filesystem or code? Yes. It can not be distributed compiled into a kernel distributed on CDROM, legally, because of the license conflict, but it can be used in an after-market fashion by an end user. What that basically means is that you have to install it on another FS type without that restriction before you are able to use the ReiserFS, XFS, OpenGFS, or your own JFS port-in-progress. Since doing this is an incredible pain, and the benefits you get from doing it are most often not worth the pain, most people don't do it. Also, since it's not on the CDROM, it's unlikely to ever become the default root FS, in any case. Even if you wanted to locally roll your own CDROM for this, you would have to modify the boot loader code to be able to read XFS or whatever FS's in order to load the third stage boot loader, kernel, and kernel modules, etc.. That's basically a read-write port *plus* a read-only port of the code, which makes it about 1.75 times as much work as just doing the kernel port (it used to be only about 1.5 times, but now the boot code has to be able to get files out of subdirectories because of the reorganized kernel and module code). -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-fs" in the body of the message
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