Comment by blacklight

The Linux kernel has been released under GPL2 license since day 1, and I don't think that's ever going to change. Linus is more pragmatic than many of his detractors think - he thankfully refused to migrate to GPL3 because the stricter clauses would have scared away a lot of for-profit users and contributors.

Relaxing on anything more permissive than GPL2 would instead mean the end of Linux as we know it. A more permissive license means that nothing would prevent Google or Microsoft from releasing their own closed-source Linux, or replacing the source code of most of the modules with hex bloats.

I believe that GPL2 is a good trade-off for a project like Linux, and it's good that we don't compromise on anything less than that.

Even though I agree on the superiority of ZFS for many applications, I think that the blame for the missed inclusion in the kernel is on Oracle's side. The lesson learned from NTFS should be that if a filesystem is good and people want to use it, then you should make sure that the drivers for that filesystem are as widely available as possible. If you don't do it, then someone sooner or later will reverse engineer the filesystem anyway. The success of a filesystem is measured by the number of servers that use it, not by the amount of money that you can make out of it. For once Oracle should act more like a tech company and less like a legal firm specialised in patent exploitation.