ZFS On Linux Runs Into A Snag With Linux 5.0

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ZFS On Linux Runs Into A Snag With Linux 5.0

While the Linux 5.0 kernel has a lot of enticing features and improvements, if you rely upon ZFS On Linux (ZOL) you will probably want to hold off on trying the Linux 5.0 release candidates at this time...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ZFS-On-Linux-5.0-Problem

[pdffs]

It's a shame that BTRFS turned out to be be such a steaming pile of crap, ZFS is the only filesystem of its kind worth using right now.

[shmerl]

We need bcachefs to mature soon. It's the only contender with good prospects both for performance and features.

[sireangelus]

what i don't understand is- can't we relicense and fork it since it uses such a permessive license?

[k1e0x]

My tolerance for ZFS is pretty non-existant. Sun explicitly did not want their code to work on Linux, so why would we do extra work to get their code to work properly?

Speculation. The creators of ZFS are human beings like Matt Ahrens who clearly does want it to run on Linux.. but.. if Linux kernel dev's don't want it.. I'm sure FreeBSD will have no problem stealing Linux's market share with it.

[shmerl]

Speculation. The creators of ZFS are human beings like Matt Ahrens who clearly does want it to run on Linux.. but.. if Linux kernel dev's don't want it.. I'm sure FreeBSD will have no problem stealing Linux's market share with it.

Nothing stopped creators of ZFS from releasing under dual license, besides Sun. So may be it wasn't political, but it was surely management failure. And after [s]hostile takover[/s] Oracle acquisition, it was too late already.

[ALRBP]

Speculation. The creators of ZFS are human beings like Matt Ahrens who clearly does want it to run on Linux.. but.. if Linux kernel dev's don't want it.. I'm sure FreeBSD will have no problem stealing Linux's market share with it.

If they want it to run on Linux, then they just have to relicense it.
It is not ZFS that will allow FreeBSD to take Linux's market shares. Lots of people are happy with Linux's filesystems.

I remember a similar issue happened a few years ago with AMD's proprietary drivers… not long before AMD switched to their hybrid driver stack. So, I think that GKH's attitude is acutally the best way to convince ZFS's rights owners to relicense it.
FreeBSD's ZFS implementation is now based on ZOL, a good indication that ZOL is the main ZFS implementation now, and ZFS needs Linux support much more thant Linux needs ZFS support. Maybe ZFS will end up being relicensed and included in the kernel, so we can finaly see wich FS is the best, without having to care about kernel inclusion.

[funkboy]

"My tolerance for ZFS is pretty non-existant. Sun explicitly did not want their code to work on Linux, so why would we do extra work to get their code to work properly?"

Despite Linux's new code of conduct, & Linus "turning over a new leaf" etc., it's clear that it will take a generation before the dude-bro-ism slowly works its way out of their culture.

[some_canuck]

If they want it to run on Linux, then they just have to relicense it.

Wishful thinking. The problem there is, you would have to ask Oracle, on top of former Sun employees (who may or may not still be living), current illumos developers, as well as anyone who has contributed from *bsd and linux (and mac/windows). If going CDDL was hard enough for Sun back in the early 00's, you can imagine how much harder it will be in 2019 to go GPL.

[ALRBP]

Wishful thinking. The problem there is, you would have to ask Oracle, on top of former Sun employees (who may or may not still be living), current illumos developers, as well as anyone who has contributed from *bsd and linux (and mac/windows). If going CDDL was hard enough for Sun back in the early 00's, you can imagine how much harder it will be in 2019 to go GPL.

Actually, any GPLv2 compatible license would be fine. Including BSD/MIT or LGPLv2.
Unhappily, since Linus refused to re-license the kernel to GPLv3, no version of the Apache License can be used.

And, if this is not possible, we'll just use another FS. We lived without ZFS for years after all.