[Wylug-discuss] I could not resist,

[Mark P. Conmy]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2007, Tom Hall wrote:
> 
> You may begin to think I'm a fanatic, but I am just reading
> http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/6/12/232
> And Linus says "maybe ZFS is worthwhile enough that
> I'm willing to go to the effort of trying to relicense the kernel."
> High praise indeed.
> Schwartz replies http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/one_plus_one_is_fifty 
> here.

In context, that _was_ a very hypothetical "maybe"; Linus was explaining
that there may be issues which would make him consider the effort
required to relicense the kernel.  He does like the look of ZFS, but the
impression he gives is that he hasn't actually looked at it himself yet.

Bear in mind, to do that would probably require a full code audit of the
entire code base.  You need to identify every (significant*) contributor
and either get them to relicense or rewrite their code.  In the case of
those contributors who are dead (there are a number), that means getting
their estate to agree.  It's a fairly major undertaking.

Of course: IANAL,

Mark

* If the code involved is non-protectable, it doesn't need to be
   explicitly relicensed.