Linus Torvalds Doesn't Recommend Using ZFS On Linux

[finalzone]

I believe the CDDL and GPL are compatible so I have no issues mixing them. (others believe this too.)

As long those users keep them internal and avoid mixing both licenses in a business production environment. Let remind former SUN engineers themselves clearly quoted CDDL was deliberately designed to be incompatible with GPL. That was posted at the time for that license creation where Linux powered operating systems took away share from SUN. Knowing the legal history of Oracle who owns the ZFS rights and is also a Linux kernel contributor, Linus Torvalds will not take a risk and rightfully told those ZFS they are on their own to fix problems.
Should a commercial entity attempt using ZFS in production environment mixed with Linux kernel, they better get lawyers and more finances for potential lawsuits.

[k1e0x]

wake me when you have written agreement from oracle lawyers

The fact the most sue heavy corporation in the world hasn't sued any of the companies using OpenZFS is good enough for me. (Such as DDN, what are they the 3'rd or 4'th largest storage provider?)

[muncrief]

....
You can get that with HDD and filesystems like BTRFS(and I assume ZFS) no? On an SSD it doesn't matter, or needs to be handled specially since having extra copies(of metadata blocks I think to detect bitrot), as SSDs can de-dupe internally such that if that data goes bad, then both "copies" will also be bad and thus bitrot would not be detected. Can't recall if it was detection or repair. Something like that.

Btrfs and Zfs are unstable and Zfs is unsupported as well. That's the problem. In order to detect bit rot with Linux you have to take enormous risks with the data itself because of unstable and unsupported file systems. That's why I said it was a shame.

[k1e0x]

As long those users keep them internal and avoid mixing both licenses in a business production environment. Let remind former SUN engineers themselves clearly quoted CDDL was deliberately designed to be incompatible with GPL. That was posted at the time for that license creation where Linux powered operating systems took away share from SUN. Knowing the legal history of Oracle who owns the ZFS rights and is also a Linux kernel contributor, Linus Torvalds will not take a risk and rightfully told those ZFS they are on their own to fix problems.
Should a commercial entity attempt using ZFS in production environment mixed with Linux kernel, they better get lawyers and more finances for potential lawsuits.

Source?

Here is the creator of DTrace saying that isn't true. (DTrace uses the same License) He explains why they didn't use the GPL also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc

[Terrablit]

I'd love to have ZFS in the kernel. It's my favorite file system for servers. The featureset is amazing. Integrating RAID functionality into file systems is really the way of the future, since having the FS be aware of the underlying disks makes data integrity much more holistic.

I'd also love for BTRFS to have 2+ years of stability. There's still random data loss issues popping up, which makes it a file system I don't care to use in production. If BTRFS could be stable, I wouldn't care as much about ZFS. The proposed features are close enough that I could deal with what BTRFS doesn't have if only I didn't risk losing data by using it. Especially with RAID 5/6 support.

At the same time, I blame Oracle for not having ZFS in Linux. If they'd just MIT ZFS it'd get picked up super quick. Continuing to use their CDDL makes it understandably unreliable from a legal standpoint. Until that's fixed, it'll stay out of tree.

[k1e0x]

Btrfs and Zfs are unstable and Zfs is unsupported as well. That's the problem. In order to detect bit rot with Linux you have to take enormous risks with the data itself because of unstable and unsupported file systems. That's why I said it was a shame.

Omg, someone should tell these people quick! lol

https://medium.com/codedotgov/oss-sp...x-6596fca6e5f6

*Only* 30,000 spindles on ZoL.. Amount of data lost in over 10 years = none.

Linus should tell them not to use that.. ZFS is also used to store data for the Large Hadron Collider.. maybe Linus has some suggestions on how they should manage their data.

[finalzone]

Source?

Former SUN president Jonathan Schwarz: https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-critic...ource-license/

Here is the creator of DTrace saying that isn't true. (DTrace uses the same License) He explains why they didn't use the GPL also.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc

Who owns DTrace? Oracle which licensed it since 0.6.1 under GPL and UPL to facilitate the port on Linux kernel.
Reference:https://oss.oracle.com/projects/DTrace/
unlike ZFS from which Oracle is unwilling to re-license

[k1e0x]

Former SUN president Jonathan Schwarz: https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-critic...ource-license/

Who owns DTrace? Oracle which licensed it since 0.6.1 under GPL and UPL to facilitate the port on Linux kernel.
Reference:https://oss.oracle.com/projects/DTrace/
unlike ZFS from which Oracle is unwilling to re-license

Jonathan Schwarz is not a developer. Did you watch the video? You should watch it. If sun actually wanted to make a license that was incompatible.. why did they make it so vague? they could have just said. "this license is incompatible with the GPL, the end."

Also your post there seems to indicate they opposite. He stabs at the GPL and I agree with him on it.. but the CDDL says it can be mixed with other licenses.

Your logic is.. Sun didn't want the license to mix.. so they wrote a license that says it can be mixed?

[smitty3268]

Source?

Here is the creator of DTrace saying that isn't true. (DTrace uses the same License) He explains why they didn't use the GPL also.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc

Check out one of the comments:

Lovely except it really was decided to explicitly make OpenSolaris incompatible with GPL. That was one of the design points of the CDDL. I was in that room, Bryan and you were not, but I know its fun to re-write history to suit your current politics. I pleaded with Sun to use a BSD family license or the GPL itself and they would consider neither *because* that would have allowed D-Trace to end up in Linux. You can claim otherwise all you want...this was the truth in 2005.

Anyway, regardless of that, it's fundamentally missing the point if you think that matters one way or the other. The devs who wrote this stuff don't decide if something is legal. Nobody at Sun even decides it anymore. Oracle's lawyers and Larry Ellison are the only one's opinions who matter. Given the details of their java lawsuit vs Google, you'd be insane to believe they wouldn't choose to sue over ZFS if they decide they can make money from it.

That said, they'll never sue any individuals so feel free to go nuts and use ZFS all you want personally.

[jo-erlend]

Source?

Here is the creator of DTrace saying that isn't true. (DTrace uses the same License) He explains why they didn't use the GPL also.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc

More specific link to the point where CDDL was _not_ deliberately designed to be incompatible with GPL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=22m28s.

«Contrary to public claims by some ex-Sun employees, this was _not_ done to be deliberately GPL incompatible!»