> I think there's also a general suspicion that Sun could have just chosen the GPL if they cared about compatibility.
There were 'technical' reasons why they did go not with GPL, and specifically GPLv2 (GPLv3 was not out yet). IIRC, they did consider waiting for GPLv3, but it was unknown when it would be out, and one thing they desired was a patent grant, which v2 does not have.
Another condition was that they wanted a file-based copyright rather than a work-based copyright (i.e., applies to any individual files of ZFS as opposed to "ZFS" in aggregate).
I had forgotten about some of the reasons they specifically wanted file-based copyright. Sun were clients at the time and I spoke fairly frequently with the open source folks there. But I didn't remember all the details and was certainly not privy to all the internal discussions.
There were 'technical' reasons why they did go not with GPL, and specifically GPLv2 (GPLv3 was not out yet). IIRC, they did consider waiting for GPLv3, but it was unknown when it would be out, and one thing they desired was a patent grant, which v2 does not have.
Another condition was that they wanted a file-based copyright rather than a work-based copyright (i.e., applies to any individual files of ZFS as opposed to "ZFS" in aggregate).
* https://nawilson.com/2007/12/02/why-the-dislike-for-cddl/