[conspire] external storage recommendation

[Rick Moen]

Supplying the footnote I didn't get around to writing, earlier:

> ZFS was one of several ground-breaking Sun Microsystems projects that
> gave Solaris and several compatibly licensed BSDs a functionality edge
> over Linux.  The others were dtrace (which is kernel-level debugging),
> Solaris Containers aka Zones (which are a better implementation of
> chroot jails), a Kernel-based Virtual Machine, and OpenSolaris Network
> Virtualization and Resource Control aka Crossbow (a set of features that
> provides an internal network virtualization and quality of service).
> All of those are C-coded in the Solaris kernel under CDDL terms, which
> clashes with Linux's GPLv2 terms, hence the code, even if ported to the
> Linux kernel, cannot be lawfully distributed in binary form, as that
> would be copyright violation.[1] 


[1] Canonical, Ltd. ship in recent *buntu releases a binary-compiled
kernel with ZFS support, anyway, and claim there is no infraction
of legal rights committed thereby.

  We at Canonical have conducted a legal review, including discussion
  with the industry's leading software freedom legal counsel, of the
  licenses that apply to the Linux kernel and to ZFS. And in doing so,
  we have concluded that we are acting within the rights granted and in
  compliance with their terms of both of those licenses.

  https://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/02/zfs-licensing-and-linux.html

Which is cheeky, transparent, insultingly obvious corporate bullshit.
What they really mean is that they're taking an educated guess that the
Linux kernel copyright stakeholders will not give a damn sufficient to
bring copyright infringment against them and extract damages.

The corporate bullshit aspect can be seen, among other places, in
Canonical claiming that Eben Moglen and & Mishi Choudhary's paper is
"supporting" of their position
(https://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2016/linux-kernel-cddl.html). A
cursory glance at their paper reveals that is _not_ what they said.
Quoting:

  In the present case, the files containing the code of the ZFS
  filesystem are available under free software license, but the terms
  offered are CDDL, not GPLv2. So although complete and corresponding
  source code for the GPLv2-licensed kernel binary is available under free
  license, some files are available only under terms of CDDL, which is
  inconsistent with the literal meaning of GPLv2 section 2(b). For a
  community of copyright holders whose consensus intention is to limit
  their permission to the literal meaning of GPLv2's words, this is a
  sufficient basis for an objection to the combination.

  There are also, however, good reasons for a community of GPLv2 licensors
  so situated not to object:
  [...]

In other words, Moglen and Choudhary were _actually_ saying "Yes,
good kernel.org people, this binary distribution is a violation of your
copyright, but we recommend you not sue to enforce your rights, because
we think this particular violation is a good one to tolerate for various
reasons.

At the end of the day, there is still a difference between "this is 
lawful" and "we got away with it".