I was reading this article, on LWN, about “DTrace envy”. The short of the article is that, despite great efforts, the DTrace “ecosystem” of tools has yet to be replicated on Linux. Forgetting the technical considerations for a minute, it might be worth your time to read through the comments at what appears to be a partial example of what I term “political argument”.
I define political argument as an argument between any number of parties where nobody argues around the same points. It’s kinda hard for me to describe, but you can imagine it like a fencing match where both opponents are slashing at the air a foot or so to the side of their intended target. Everyone is making attacks in the general direction of the other participants, but nobody is really landing any blows. The worst part about these arguments is that nobody seems to really realize that they are tilting at windmills!
In this case, I said it was a “partial example”, and by that I mean that it appears (to me) that some of the people in this argument are landing blows, but the people receiving these blows are oblivious. That’s where any “fencing” or fighting analogy breaks down – in these blog comment flame wars, there are no referees and there is no equivalent of punching someone in the face. If the other person doesn’t think that you hit them, then they feel no pain from the blow. I imagine that it’s like a bunch of solipsists in a boxing ring, except, well, solipsism “works” in that reality.
When you read through the comments, I get the distinct impression that the Sun guys just don’t get it. I’ll try to sum up the arguments as best I can.
First, from the Linux camp:
- We really, really, really want to port DTrace to Linux, but the licensing (CDDL) prevents us from doing so.
In fact, that’s really the only one that matters. There are lots of other blows thrown around, like “Sun is making this impossible on purpose” (implying that Sun is doing something wrong),
Now, from Sun:
- Because Linux hackers aren’t officially porting DTrace to Linux, they are displaying prime evidence of NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome
- Our only obligation is to our business, shareholders, and customers – it isn’t our job to port DTrace to Linux.
- All free software licenses are equivalent under the law
- Even if they aren’t equivalent, who cares? Linux should just appropriate DTrace, because nobody is going to sue anyone
- Linux can make special licensing changes to allow CDDL’ed code.
- You smell.
This argument was basically started because of #1 (one of the earliest comments bemoaned the Linux community making up excuses for not porting DTrace to Linux). Of these arguments, only #2 is really defensible (and the last one is made up, but you really do smell, so it isn’t worth arguing, is it?), and, of all the arguments made, only #1 deals with the actual issue being argued!
It’s almost painful to read through the comments. You’ll read something like this:
Person A: "I think that we should go to the movies today."
Person B: "But Martians enjoy purple ice cream! "
…What? What was that? Did I miss something? Is this the Slashdot hide-all-that-pesky-context-in-the-middle-of-conversations effect? Did we start talking about Martians or ice cream somewhere between point A and B?
And now, allow me to illuminate the situation. IANAL and all that.
The problem is that DTrace is licensed under the CDDL. That’s fine. It is great that it is one of the many “open source” licenses. It has allowed it to be ported to lots of BSD-licensed systems, since they have no legal problems drinking cocktails with the CDDL. Peachy.
But the CDDL and the GPL don’t get along together so well, you see. The CDDL slept with the GPL’s sister, or something like that, but the important part is that they don’t automatically coexist. Whether or not this was intentional on the part of Sun doesn’t matter so much (although it does make the “Silly linux n00bs and your NIH!” argument look quite retarded), and even if Sun employees say “I give you my blessing, Linux, take my daughter, DTrace, and procreate!”, it doesn’t make it legal.
That’s it.
The reason it gets people on the linux side so goddamn agitated is because everyone wants to port DTrace to linux. Even your grandma. Everyone wants to do it, but, effectively, Sun won’t let it happen. It doesn’t matter what the Sun engineers say on that list (”Go ahead, do it, don’t worry about lawsuits”, and “You need to fix up your license, losers”); Sun created a license that was GPL incompatible, so Linux doesn’t get to swim in the CDDL pool. Also, the Linux people have made a conscious decision to be polite and not try to steal code they technically can’t license, and here the Sun people are calling the Linux guys assholes for doing just that.
I’m sure none of the Sun engineers will ever read this (especially the ones who posted on that thread), but I can’t help but think that some of them are just a little bit retarded. Not full on drooling in public, mind you, just the “oopsie I pooped myself” every once-in-awhile kind. They seem to think that the Linux people are pulling an RMS on them, saying “You evil money-making non-GPL hooligans!”, but nobody is saying that. Everyone is agreeing that it is well within Sun’s rights and responsibilities to do what’s in the best interest for Sun and not linux. It’s just when the Sun guys come back and act like asshats in front of the world, people get perturbed.