With the recent revelation that Apple will add support for ZFS it has become totally clear that Apple does not suffer from the “not invented here” syndrome that has affected many other hardware and software manufacturers. This is the second open-source project created by Sun that has been quickly adopted by Apple, the other one being DTrace which is at the core of Apple’s new XRay application that will help developers debug their applications more easily.
It is important to mention that while ZFS and DTrace are open-source, they are not licensed under the GPL. Instead, SUN decided to use it’s own CDDL which is not compatible with the GPL and therefore complicates efforts to add ZFS and DTrace to Linux. While some are willing to overlook the license issue and are trying to port these projects to Linux, it is unlikely that any of these project will make it into any standard Linux distribution, because Linus Torvalds and other important members of that community are not willing to add core kernel modules that are not GPLed. That means that Mac OS X will probably become the first OS after Solaris 10 to implement ZFS since there are no plans to add it to AIX, HP-UX or Windows.
While many will think that this is great news for Mac users, who will get a greatly improved file system, the way I see it, this situation underscores some of the problems with the way some companies deal with open-source projects. While I do understand why companies want to keep some level of control over the projects they initiated, they must also be aware of some of the negative consequences that the use of restrictive licensing can have over the adoption of their technologies. Sun must have known that by not releasing these technologies under the GPL or LGPL licenses, only Apple was likely to consider its use in their OS (as neither HP or IBM are likely to endorse a technology from a direct rival). So, why do it? Is this just another marketing stunt to try to get some publicity and win over developers without risking to lose valuable intellectual property to competitors? I am inclined to think so.
Apple also started dealing with open-source in a similar short sighted way when they decided to publish the source code for Darwin, the heart of Mac OS X, under the Apple Public Source License which is very restrictive.
However, even though Apple has not changed the license for Darwin, they have used the much more liberal Apache 2.0 licence for their projects hosted on Mac OS forge. This is a big step forward, as most developers feel very comfortable with that license. On that site there are a lot of great projects initiated by Apple such as Bonjour, Launchd and Webkit, to name a few. Therefore, while I still believe that Apple is getting more from the community than what it is giving back, I feel confident that they have learned their lesson and are really playing fair now with the open-source community by sharing some valuable projects in a way that allows everyone to use them, without significant restrictions. On the other hand, it is clear that Sun still needs to walk the talk.
December 18th, 2006 at 11:15 am
I disagree with your assertion that Mac OS X is the only one to benefit from Sun using the CDDL rather than the GPL for Solaris. True, the GPL would have made it easy to move those technologies to Linux, but the CDDL means that any other operating system may adopt them. DTrace is already in FreeBSD, and they’re working on ZFS. It’s entirely possible that you might see DTrace-like features in non-OS software — such as databases — for platforms without DTrace support. I do agree that Apple — to this point — hasn’t seemed that keen on giving back to either ZFS or DTrace. That may change as they complete their porting efforts and start needing new functionality (and when they release the source code as they are legally bound to do).