KQ ZFS Linux Is No Longer Actively Being Worked On

Remember KQ Infotech? KQ Infotech was the Indian company that ported the ZFS file-system to Linux as an out-of-tree kernel module (after deriving the code from the LLNL ZFS Linux work) and KQ's interesting methods of engagement in our forums. The company was successful in delivering an open-source ZFS module for Linux that performed semi-well and didn't depend upon FUSE (the file-systems for user-space module) like other implementations. However, this ZFS Linux code appears to no longer be worked on by KQ Infotech.

It turns out that KQ Infotech had "certain assets and IP" acquired by STEC two months ago. STEC is a company committed to designing solid-state storage devices and looked at the KQ acquisition for some talent hires and certain pieces of IP. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

KQ Infotech's web-site was shutdown and redirected to STEC, including the ZFS-related pages. All of that data has now vanished and no former KQ Infotech contacts have responded to my inquiries. The KQ Infotech ZFS blog has also been made private.

Fortunately, their public code to the ZFS and ZFS-related Linux kernel modules were hosted on GitHub. As such, all of the code is still publicly available. The last official work to the native ZFS Linux kernel module was committed a month ago while the ZFS POSIX layer, Solaris Porting Layer, and other components haven't been touched since the April acquisition or earlier.

While KQ Infotech may have vanished, fortunately ZFS for Linux has not. KQ's work was originally based upon the work done by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to bring the Sun/Oracle ZFS file-system to Linux. In complying with licenses, the LLNL is able to (and has) pulled KQ's work back into their trees. ZFSOnLinux.org is the main web-site for the LLNL ZFS work. There's also their GitHub repository where work continues to happen, just 17 hours ago is the most recent commit.