Doesn't this violate the whole spirit of the GPL? He's shocked that the usual suspects are ripping off GPL code. Tale as old as time.

It's like those SOHO router vendors that release incomprehensible tarballs of their GPL components; lotsa luck building it.

If I'm paying for closed-source ZFS, I'll go with the real thing and buy a Solaris license.

Not just the spirit. GPL requires build scripts along with the code.