Comment by barkingcat
6 years ago
Linus is correct in his arguments. As the lead for the linux project, he shouldn't merge things that he feels isn't up to stuff from a license point of view.
That's why we have different software.
If you asked Theo to merge an encryption algorithm for example into OpenSSH and OpenBSD - he's going to have an opinion about it - and that's his thing.
Why would this be controversial at all?
Because people like ZFS and Linux so they want to combine the two.
Then they can go ahead and combine the two! ZFS on linux has a whole team of maintainers.
Linus can do what he wants in regards to his branch (which because he's the lead, becomes official Linux), but there's no reason any one else (or any distro) can't do the integration. That's how open source works!
Of course, whoever does the integration may incur Oracle's wrath. Tread at your own discretion. If those people like it so much that they will put up their own money when Oracle's lawyers come calling, that's completely up to them.
In my opinion, people who constantly clamour for such things against the technical judgment of open source maintainers are freeloaders. They can propose ideas, but just because the maintainer doesn't want to do it doesn't mean they can scream bloody murder. Just put up your own money and fork it and/or maintain your own fork, which is exactly what the ZFS on linux community is doing - which is the right thing.
Anyone else can work with the ZFS on linux maintainers to take a bit of the burden on, whether it's rebasing or updating docs on how the integration works, etc. It's a group effort.