The OpenZFS project launches
ZFS is the world's most advanced filesystem, in active development for over a decade. Recent development has continued in the open, and OpenZFS is the new formal name for this open community of developers, users, and companies improving, using, and building on ZFS. Founded by members of the Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and illumos communities, including Matt Ahrens, one of the two original authors of ZFS, the OpenZFS community brings together over a hundred software developers from these platforms."
Posted Sep 17, 2013 16:58 UTC (Tue)
by Xiol (guest, #87394)
[Link] (8 responses)
Posted Sep 17, 2013 17:06 UTC (Tue)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Sep 25, 2013 14:46 UTC (Wed)
by ssam (guest, #46587)
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Posted Sep 17, 2013 21:05 UTC (Tue)
by proski (subscriber, #104)
[Link]
Posted Sep 18, 2013 0:16 UTC (Wed)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (4 responses)
Anyway, btrfs is clearly a replacement for ZFS on Linux. It doesn't have all the ZFS features right now, but it'll probably get them in the near future.
Posted Sep 18, 2013 11:36 UTC (Wed)
by nye (subscriber, #51576)
[Link] (3 responses)
On the contrary, this is likely to be particularly beneficial to Linux, as it represents ZFS as a standalone project, rather than a part of illumos. One of their goals is a greater separation of platform-specific parts, and an emphasis on improved portability and co-operation between the different ports of ZFS, which should reduce the work required to keep zfsonlinux up to date with upstream. (See http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Reduce_code_differences and http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Platform_code_differences)
>Anyway, btrfs is clearly a replacement for ZFS on Linux. It doesn't have all the ZFS features right now, but it'll probably get them in the near future.
We've been hearing that for five years now. Currently it's nowhere near feature-complete, progress is slow, and people are regularly losing data. I have a reasonably high degree of confidence that there will *never* be a day that it catches up to ZFS.
Posted Sep 18, 2013 13:07 UTC (Wed)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (2 responses)
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you. It's been "almost ready now" for longer than I can remember. Meanwhile, my first attempt at a btrfs filesystem (on a small, light use SSD in a media center type of system), managed to corrupt itself beyond repair under normal operating conditions.
(The system had never had an unclean shutdown either, so it's not like I can blame a power outage)
Posted Sep 23, 2013 12:01 UTC (Mon)
by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Sep 23, 2013 12:02 UTC (Mon)
by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164)
[Link]
Posted Sep 17, 2013 17:25 UTC (Tue)
by lyda (subscriber, #7429)
[Link] (14 responses)
Regardless of the technical merit of ZFS, it's a giant lawsuit just awaiting a victim.
Posted Sep 17, 2013 20:45 UTC (Tue)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (7 responses)
Indeed, if you want to avail of any features found in ZFS that happened to be patented by Oracle, then *NOT* using ZFS would be the *best* way to open yourself to the risk of being sued by Oracle. The best way then to *avoid* that risk would be ensure you use the CDDLed Oracle code implementing those patents.
E.g., similar to how Google, had they used the GPL OpenJDK, rather than another implementation, could then not have been sued by Oracle for infringement of JVM patents.
Posted Sep 18, 2013 1:29 UTC (Wed)
by salimma (subscriber, #34460)
[Link] (6 responses)
This wouldn't affect OpenZFS on other platforms, of course, so I agree with the previous commenter - this would be of benefit mostly to FreeBSD, Solaris forks and maybe OS X (I wonder what happened to ZFS there, after some positive noises before OS X 10.5)
Posted Sep 18, 2013 2:03 UTC (Wed)
by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955)
[Link] (1 responses)
That would be very interesting to see, as Oracle itself ships a Linux kernel including DTrace (and I don't believe they have explicitly relicensed it).
Posted Sep 18, 2013 11:58 UTC (Wed)
by drag (guest, #31333)
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Posted Sep 18, 2013 9:46 UTC (Wed)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (3 responses)
Re suing for CDDL/GPL incompatibility - any copyright holder could do that. That's nothing specific to Oracle. Indeed, Oracle possibly have less ability to sue on those grounds than others, as Ben pointed out.
Further, the incompatibilities between the CDDL and GPL are not terribly great. Philosophically, they are very close in intent. They differ mostly in technical details, e.g. the CDDL being explicit about patent rights and attempting to implement "patent MAD" (Sun having had bad experiences with being sued itself by patent holders), which the GPL (at that time, v2 was the latest) was very weak or quiet on. It'd be interesting to hear expert opinion on what impact that'd have on potential damages.
I certainly very strongly suspect any the damages would be *much* less than you'd get from losing a patent suit. I would be surprised if the CDDL/GPL incompatibility risks were anything but trivial compared to the risks of choosing to use Oracle ZFS patents *without* availing oneself of the licence to those patents offered by the CDDLed ZFS code. ;)
That said, most people will choose to avoid both those risks, of course. However, again, if you simply can not avoid those patents, then your smartest move may well be to avail of the CDDL licence to them, rather than avoid a perfectly good, free patent licence.
Posted Sep 18, 2013 12:00 UTC (Wed)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (2 responses)
There is not much more to say about the subject then that.
It's not the first license to do that and it's not going to be the last. The only people that can do anything about it are either the Linux kernel developers or Oracle and that can only happen by them choosing to change the license.
Posted Sep 19, 2013 5:54 UTC (Thu)
by Blaisorblade (guest, #25465)
[Link] (1 responses)
How viable is that? Is there still a point in using the presumably slower ZFS-FUSE?
Posted Sep 19, 2013 16:46 UTC (Thu)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link]
That is as long as their code is not derivative of Linux kernel code then the GPL cannot apply because that is outside the scope of copyright owned by the various Linux kernel devs.
Presumably once it's compiled it's going to pull in code from the kernel it's compiled against and then it would be a derivative product and falls under the scope of the GPL license. The GPL license, of course, itself says that it's restrictions only apply to distributed code and nothing that you use yourself. Therefore it would be legal to combine CDDL code and GPL (and produce a derivative of both) code as long as you don't distribute it since GPL doesn't restrict in this sort of usage.
The key here is 'derivative'. This is a legal term with specific definitions that is in the USA copyright code. It's a core concept to the copyright law itself. What is and what is not derivative is ultimately up to a court to decide. It's actually very arbitrary and don't expect it to always make logical sense so there may be some unexpected 'gotchas' and is why people pay money for lawyers to help interpret (which I am not one of them).
But ultimately, as long as the OpenZFS are fairly careful, then it's perfectly legal to distribute the code that you need to build your own modules. This is similar to the situation with the Nvidia binary driver.
The OpenAFS file system drivers for Linux have similar legal situation also. It's distributed under the IBM Public License which the FSF claims is incompatible with the GPL.
From FSF's license comparison website: 'This is a free software license. Unfortunately, it has a choice of law clause which makes it incompatible with the GNU GPL.'
Pretty much the same boat as the CDDL for the subject under discussion. OpenAFS support is a pretty normal feature that distributions support.
ie:
% yum search openafs |grep $(uname -r)
Although you'd have to look at the code of OpenZFS vs OpenAFS and talk to a lawyer to be fairly sure. Some kernel modules will violate the GPL even if they were in source code format. It's a very case-by-case situation.
Posted Sep 17, 2013 20:54 UTC (Tue)
by gus3 (guest, #61103)
[Link] (5 responses)
1. Oracle's reputation has tanked, thanks in large part to their abusive treatment of former Sun customers and collaborators. Of love, respect, or fear, Ellison chose the least productive one to instill in people. The exodus from Java, OpenOffice, and MySQL falls under "what did he expect?". Any new collateral bad PR for Oracle would diminish their standing even more. It's no way to grow the customer base, and it will make more corporate enemies than corporate friends.
2. I can't think of anything that would more accelerate the demise of software-only patents, than a lawsuit from Oracle over ZFS. Oracle is vulnerable right now, and many parties are more willing to take them on in court than they would have been even three years ago. A court case would be a gamble for all parties involved, but I doubt it's a gamble Oracle can afford right now.
Posted Sep 18, 2013 10:40 UTC (Wed)
by cyperpunks (guest, #39406)
[Link] (4 responses)
Care to explain? Has Oracle stopped shipping Java and MySQL?
Posted Sep 18, 2013 10:54 UTC (Wed)
by sabroad (guest, #92392)
[Link] (3 responses)
exodus: a situation in which many people leave a place at the same time
A supplier doesn't need to stop supply for customers to leave.
Posted Sep 18, 2013 11:15 UTC (Wed)
by hummassa (guest, #307)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Sep 18, 2013 18:05 UTC (Wed)
by tuomasjjrasanen (guest, #86050)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Sep 20, 2013 17:18 UTC (Fri)
by job (guest, #670)
[Link]
One can only wonder why Oracle just doesn't let them loose instead of repeatedly stabbing them in the back until there is no community left. There can hardly be any money to be made from this behaviour.
Posted Sep 19, 2013 7:14 UTC (Thu)
by abacus (guest, #49001)
[Link] (10 responses)
Posted Sep 19, 2013 9:28 UTC (Thu)
by Lennie (subscriber, #49641)
[Link] (8 responses)
I've not seen any indication anywhere that says anything else.
Posted Sep 20, 2013 10:07 UTC (Fri)
by Rudd-O (guest, #61155)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Sep 20, 2013 10:42 UTC (Fri)
by Lennie (subscriber, #49641)
[Link] (6 responses)
That has mostly been solved by ZoL, but the real question is: can it be included with Linux distributions ? I don't think I've seen that yet.
If not, then it can't ever be the default filesystem on Linux either.
Posted Sep 20, 2013 11:49 UTC (Fri)
by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Sep 20, 2013 12:02 UTC (Fri)
by Lennie (subscriber, #49641)
[Link] (1 responses)
So if binaries can't be distributed and the installer doesn't support DKMS packages then the result will be it will never be the default filesystem.
Posted Sep 30, 2013 15:23 UTC (Mon)
by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
[Link]
IIRC you can install Debian inside VirtualBox and you'll end up with a system including virtualbox-guest-dkms without any user intervention.
Posted Sep 28, 2013 17:49 UTC (Sat)
by peschmae (guest, #32292)
[Link] (1 responses)
They do so for a variety of reasons, starting with "Kernel too new and not supported yet". The situation seems to have improved recently, but its still not as reliable as modules that just *are* in the kernel.
I would hesitate format / with a filesystem that is due to break at the next upgrade...
Posted Sep 30, 2013 15:28 UTC (Mon)
by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
[Link]
I can't speak for the distribution you're using, but in Debian the kernel packages have an 'ABI number' embedded within them, so when you upgrade the kernel to apply e.g., a security fix you know you won't have to rebuild anything, let alone have to worry that you can't rebuild due to an API change.
Posted Sep 19, 2013 10:43 UTC (Thu)
by nye (subscriber, #51576)
[Link]
There's been some work done recently that might have some bearing on this. The fragmentation itself won't be reduced (really it's intrinsic to the design of a log-structured filesystem), but peformance when free space is running low should be much improved. See http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.os.illumos.zfs/2565 - there's been some more discussion on the topic, but you'll have to dig around the list to find it.
>Not allowing to shrink a filesystem
This, along with actual defragmentation, would require block pointer rewrite functionality. This is a blocker for a lot of features, and has been talked about for years without any visible progress. Someone (might have been Matt Ahrens) mentioned a while back that they had been working on BP rewrite at Oracle, shortly before all the ZFS developers of note left the company. Reading between the lines, I suspect this might be taken as an indication that those most qualified to do that work might be concerned about legal repercussions if they did so (but this is purely speculation on my part).
Regardless, there's recently been some noise at Nexenta about implementing BP rewrite (see http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.os.illumos.zfs/month=20130701 for example), so you never know.
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
I'd rather see another situation. If ZFS on FUSE becomes popular, major distros would provide an option to install on ZFS, which eventually could become the default. If FUSE is widely used, many other filesystems and filesystem encryption could be ported to the userspace. That would make Linux one step closer to a microkernel.
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
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The OpenZFS project launches
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Since Oracle has some substantial contributions in the Linux kernel (Btrfs, among others), could they not sue people who commercialize OpenZFS/Linux on the ground of GPL - CDDL license incompatibilities?
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue
The OpenZFS project launches
kmod-openafs-3.10.11-200.fc19.x86_64.x86_64 : openafs kernel module(s) for
: 3.10.11-200.fc19.x86_64
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
>
> Care to explain? Has Oracle stopped shipping Java and MySQL?
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
The OpenZFS project launches
Does anyone perhaps know what the current status is of the following ZFS aspects ?
ZFS Design
ZFS Design
ZFS Design
ZFS Design
ZFS Design
ZFS Design
ZFS Design
ZFS Design
ZFS Design
ZFS Design