CDDL+GPL and stuff

[Konstantin Svist]

Hi there,

I'm curious as to exactly what the ramifications are of using CDDL (or 
similar The incompatibility seems to be on GPL-side only license) and 
GPL together. I'm trying to understand what's "legal" and what's not, so 
let's engage in a hypothetical discussion :)

Let's use as an example porting ZFS to Linux (yes, I'm drooling at this 
forbidden fruit, just like many other Linux users).

Here's my current understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong:
* it's all fair game if I merge ZFS into Linux kernel and keep it all 
for myself (don't distribute the binaries)
* if, on the other hand, I distribute the binaries in any way - even if 
only inside hardware - I have to distribute the source to those who 
received the binaries, and the problems begin.

What kind of problems would those be? The incompatibility seems to be on 
GPL-side only; CDDL explicitly permits linking to other licenses - so 
it's not like Sun will retaliate against the poor bastard who put the 
two together.

What about GPL Exceptions? I've read about OpenSSL exception 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSSL_exception#GPL_exception). Who has 
the power grant/append such an exception?


What if there's a separate from kernel project, which will keep all the 
necessary changes to the Linux kernel to enable users to compile the 
merged code and use it for themselves? Would this be possible under some 
license?
Maybe not actually linking (i.e. not distributing any binaries) would be 
helpful? I mean, source code should pretty much be covered by Free Speech...




Thanks,
Konstantin