This was in the news before. What's the big new thing about this article? It reads like a writeup of the news of yesterday. Also, ZFS is not coming to Linux as such, it's coming to Ubuntu specifically and the article does not clear up the detail why this is now possible for Ubuntu but was not possible for the rest of the Linux community.
Am I really reading this correctly, that the plan seems to be "ignore the possible license incompatibility and hope Oracle doesn't sue?"
Because of all ways to fill in the "Hope _____ doesn't sue" plan, "Oracle" must be in the top 5 worst companies to fill in the blank with in the tech industry.
I'm not a lawyer or an expert on the CDDL, however it could be that the license incompatibility is one-way: maybe only the GPL rightsholders have reason to sue.
Unfortunately, Oracle also holds copyright in Linux, so they can sue as a GPL rightsholder.
The real question is whether Oracle could convince a jury. It is hard to imagine what their argument would be. Then again, I would have never imagined that they would use copyright law over APIs to attack Google's use of Java.
No, the plan was, "have the lawyers evaluate the possible license incompatibility, decide that the really isn't one, and release the module." The SFLC is essentially running a FUD campaign here by trying to paint Canonical as being reckless.
I phrased it as a "possible license incompatibility" very carefully. I'm personally ambivalent about whether it is; I know enough to know I don't know. And even those who think they know will generally agree that you don't really know know until it is tested in court.
The real problem here is that Oracle is the sort of company that does "test it in court". Is Canonical really big enough to be able to afford this level of risk? Even if they win I would be surprised if they managed to talk the judge into awarding them lawyer costs from Oracle. There's definitely enough ambiguity here that it wouldn't be a stupid suit. Legally, anyhow.
ZFS is not coming to Linux as such, it's coming to Ubuntu specifically
This is a faulty understanding of the issue. Other distros such as Debian are packaing 'ZFS on Linux'. Ubuntu is not the first one to offer the ability to have ZFS on Linux in the distros main repository. The difference is actually that the other distros distribute the ZFS code as source, then have the user compile it on their own computer, and then those distros consider that end product as non-redistributable. Whereas Ubunutu is doing the compilation on their own, then distributing the resulting binary work. That's the actual difference.
It's a fair critique though I didn't write this because I thought I was breaking news. The Canonical announcement was honestly exciting for me, in particular because they evaluated the licensing issues and decided that they were within their rights to provide ZFS to their users. It seemed though that the voices of practitioners was being drowned out by those focusing exclusively on legal matters. I was hoping to provide some information for those unacquainted with both the technology and the legal miasma. Regardless, I'm excited that ZFS is about to have many more users.
AFAIK they are saying that because it is a DKMS module and Linux is not a derivative work, they are not restricted from using it by the license. By Canonical's interpretation, it would only become an issue if they were to build the support directly into the kernel natively rather than using a standalone zfs.ko file.
Keep in mind IANAL and this is just my limited understanding of the issue.
One nice thing about things "coming to Ubuntu specifically" is that a lot of people get used to what Linux is "like" through Ubuntu. So when Ubuntu does something, people start looking for that thing whenever they use Linux generally. It generates demand, which pushes changes through.
