The "she, along with many actual engineers" is referring to the desire for GPL; I do not doubt there were. The "are/were there others?" is asking for corroboration on the claim that CDDL was designed specifically to be incompatible with GPL.

The CDDL-GPL drama seems to be one of an attitude of "fuck-ZFS because fuck-Sun/Oracle and their fucking CDDL license".

The validity of the claim that the design of CDDL was 'malicious' is the thing I am skeptical about.

It may have ended up incompatible because of technical-legal reasons, but was that the intent? Cooper says yes, Phipps/Cantrill say no.

Sun did submit the license to the OSI for consultation/approval. It could very well have consulted the FSF/FSC, but they did not. This to me suggests they did not care about GPL compatibility.