I'm looking through the source I have for DTrace, and there is code written by folks other than Oracle, so changing the license is more difficult than just that. Regarding the GPL, one must ask at the same time why the GPL makes itself deliberately incompatible with four-clause BSD code, or other Free licenses that predated the GPL. Viral licensing just leads to petty fiefdoms and precludes the very sharing they claim to protect.
oh boy, another GPL debate! phk was right, seems we never get tired of this stupid shit.
It didn't make itself "deliberately incompatible" with all free licenses before it, for example MIT/X11 is definitely compatible. Why is the original BSD license singled out?
Many people besides you believe proprietary software is harmful enough to enact defense mechanisms when proprietary software vendors harm the user and lock down free software into their products.
I singled out the original BSD license because it was extant and the GPL was not compatible with it. Such clauses are pretty common in the software world and give credit where credit's due; hell, Microsoft has no problem with it, why does it bind the panties of the average GPL supporter so much?
Furthermore, I'd argue that a lot of those defense mechanisms that copyleft supporters claim are necessary cause much more harm to Free Software than they do to proprietary software. The ability to use GCC for static analysis, for example, was muddied for many years by the GCC team's unwillingness to create a suitable API out of fear that it would become easier for proprietary software teams to use GCC without contributing. Meanwhile, proprietary compiler chains, like those Microsoft provided, were easily able to create those same tools because they were not driven by such fears. Additionally, you have statements from people like RMS trying to memory hole software ( http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2001-02/msg00895.html ) that doesn't agree with his political views. While the goals may be noble, the route the free software community has chosen to get there has devolved into stubbornness and childishness to the detriment of everyone.
> I'm looking through the source I have for DTrace, and there is code written by folks other than Oracle,
That is irrelevant if DTrace used copyright assignment to ensure that there was always one copyright holder, regardless of the number or affiliations of contributors. I honestly don't know if they did or not, but from what I've heard in this thread it sounds like they did.
I think development has moved away from Oracle now partly, but at one point there was a Sun/Oracle only version. This piece [0] argues that the reason for not dual licensing it was that there might be GPL only contributions and then eventually a GPL fork, which is not that unlikely given the larger size of Linux vs VSD+Solaris. Same with ZFS I guess, even if Oracle mostly sponsored btrfs.
