Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on October 16, 2006 03:37 PM
It's a shame that the licensing issues prevent porting DTrace and Zones to Linux, but until that's sorted out, Nexenta provides the most user-friendly OpenSolaris-based OS that I've tried.
Those same licensing issues also prevent porting GPLed software, like dpkg and APT, to the Solaris runtime libraries that Nexenta links them with. The GPL exception which permits linking to proprietary operating system libraries, which forms the basis for all the GPLed software ported to proprietary platforms like Windows and GPL-incompatible platforms like Solaris, does not apply if you distribute both the proprietary libraries and the GPLed software. This limitation to the "OS exception" exists for precisely this purpose: preventing vendors of proprietary operating systems from enhancing them with Free Software, while still permiting Free Software ports to proprietary platforms.
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Nexenta still a GPL violation
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on October 16, 2006 03:37 PMThose same licensing issues also prevent porting GPLed software, like dpkg and APT, to the Solaris runtime libraries that Nexenta links them with. The GPL exception which permits linking to proprietary operating system libraries, which forms the basis for all the GPLed software ported to proprietary platforms like Windows and GPL-incompatible platforms like Solaris, does not apply if you distribute both the proprietary libraries and the GPLed software. This limitation to the "OS exception" exists for precisely this purpose: preventing vendors of proprietary operating systems from enhancing them with Free Software, while still permiting Free Software ports to proprietary platforms.
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