In the immortal words of james rich (james.rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxx):
>
> > expect that if Sun thought they could gain some sort of competetive
> > advantage from shipping Solaris 9 with XFS, they'd simply go ahead and
> > do so with the existing GPL code.
>
> Since XFS integrates with the OS they would have to GPL Solaris (I think)
> - not likely.
Why on earth do you make this assertion? Solaris supports loadable
independent kernel modules just as linux does -- implementing xfs on
solaris in a way that didn't "contaminate" the kernel with the GPL
would be a pretty straightforward exercise. (Well, at least, it would
probably not add significantly to the effort involved in a Solaris
port to begin with, which might be high.)
> With a BSD compatible license (such as would be required to
> make it into the *BSDs) Sun (or anyone else) could take the XFS code,
> modify it to work for them (and potentially not work for you - see
> MicroSoft and kerberos) and then sell the result *without helping SGI in
> any way*. So SGI loses contributors to it's code and gains a competitor
> using its own filesystem!
I think we're all in agreement that a BSD-style license doesn't get
SGI anything but goodwill from the xBSD camp. I just think the
paranoia about Sun is probably unjustified: as I've pointed out
elsewhere, they gain little and potentially lose a lot by adopting
XFS into Solaris's base distribution.
-n
------------------------------------------------------------<memory@xxxxxxxxx>
As someone who used to work for both the Soviet Union and an (unnamed here,
but well-known otherwise) American phone company I can only confirm the rather
conspicious similarity. (--Vadim Antonov)
<http://blank.org/memory/>----------------------------------------------------
|