Btrfs To Ship Multiple Performance Improvements In The Next Linux Kernel

[jacob]

(1)By the same token, it cannot migrate to, lets say, GPLv3

Indeed. But that's OK. I have never been been fond of that "or any later version" clause. I also release my own software strictly as GPLv2 only. In part because I still can't wrap my mind about what the GPLv3 actually means in terms of its legal foundations and consequences, and also because I don't like the idea that someone will at some point rewrite the licence for my software in ways that I can't predict.

(2)Bunch of random incidents aided Linux equally or more than it's license. Linux took off in popularity when FreeBSD was implementing SMP and did at first shitty job. Then FreeBSD's users (it was used far more than Linux back then) migrated to Linux because it happened to be ready and accessible alternative (no OpenSolaris yet). Later times, additional factors aiding Linux were Oracle closing OpenSolaris after buying Sun and Google opting to use Linux kernel for it's new embedded OS Android. Without all of it, FreeBSD or OpenSolaris could easily be in the same position Linux has nowadays. Just mostly luck IMHO.

Of course everything can always be attributed to luck, but initially FreeBSD was really more advanced than Linux, and yet the big players preferred investing massively into then-toy OS Linux (in the case of IBM, it was literally billions of $$$) than contributing to FreeBSD which, in theory, could have been ready for prime time quicker and for cheaper thanks to its headstart. One can forever speculate why it was so, but FWIW my explanation is that contributing stuff like XFS, LVM, RCU etc. to BSD means effectively giving it for free to your competitors to use in their proprietary products, that compete directly with your own. Contributing the same to Linux is safe from this point of view, courtesy to the copyleft a.k.a. viral nature of the GPL.

Where GPL in fact aided and served it's purpose was with Linksys court case - suddenly people could have access to sources for their routers - would not have been possible with BSD license.

That was great for the users of those routers. In terms of the importance of the GPL for Linux's fate it's a footnote.

Also, define success - Linux has a few percents market on desktop and still less far smaller market share in servers than Windows, except for web servers where it indeed rules the roost.

The desktop remains the great failure for Linux, that's clear. As for the rest, which planet do you live on? Windows holds something like 35% of the overall server market and is heavily concentrated mainly on SMBs. The rest is pretty much all Linux (with a very very VERY few notable exceptions). And there is also a lot more to computing than desktop and servers. Last time I looked it up (~ 2 weeks ago), some 67% of all cloud deployments were Linux-based. All 500 of the current Top500 run Linux. More than 75% of all mobile devices in the world run Linux. In the IoT world, there is basically Arduino, MIPS and ARM, and the latter two are virtually all Linux (if you search hard enough you may be able to find the odd NetBSD here or there, but it's statistically irrelevant).

That's a definition of success lots of people would dream of.

[ChrisIrwin]

write script which does chattr +C ? how btrfs should know which files are "bad for cow" and "not needed to snapshot" at the same time?

Setting +C doesn't disable snapshots. You can still snapshot files that you've disabled COW on, and BTRFS will handle that by silently doing COW on your +C files while the snapshot exists.

[aht0]

Thanks God for that.(1) Being forever stuck on GPLv2 is precisely what makes this licence so good, and I contend that (2) it's also what made Linux so successful compared to other open source OSes that use non-sticky licences.
BTW just the idea of switching to a crappy licence in order to be able to merge in this piece of hodgepodgey bloatware gives me shills.

(1)By the same token, it cannot migrate to, lets say, GPLv3
(2)Bunch of random incidents aided Linux equally or more than it's license. Linux took off in popularity when FreeBSD was implementing SMP and did at first shitty job. Then FreeBSD's users (it was used far more than Linux back then) migrated to Linux because it happened to be ready and accessible alternative (no OpenSolaris yet). Later times, additional factors aiding Linux were Oracle closing OpenSolaris after buying Sun and Google opting to use Linux kernel for it's new embedded OS Android. Without all of it, FreeBSD or OpenSolaris could easily be in the same position Linux has nowadays. Just mostly luck IMHO.

Where GPL in fact aided and served it's purpose was with Linksys court case - suddenly people could have access to sources for their routers - would not have been possible with BSD license.

Also, define success - Linux has a few percents market on desktop and still less far smaller market share in servers than Windows, except for web servers where it indeed rules the roost.

[jacob]

Hey Linux, why not change over to CDDL instead? It would solve the problem. Oh wait, you are stuck on GPLv2 forever..

Thanks God for that. Being forever stuck on GPLv2 is precisely what makes this licence so good, and I contend that it's also what made Linux so successful compared to other open source OSes that use non-sticky licences.

BTW just the idea of switching to a crappy licence in order to be able to merge in this piece of hodgepodgey bloatware gives me shills.

[jacob]

Is btrfs stable for daily use? I see people regularly mention that ZFS should be used for critical data and btrfs is still a toy...

ZFS is more mature than btrfs ON SOLARIS. It is *mostly* ok on FreeBSD (with various caveats) and I wouldn't recommend it on Linux. In terms of design, both ZFS and Btrfs have their issues (in the sense that in looking back, there are things that should have been done differently). In theory the ZFS is the worse of the two, being block-based rather than extent-based, but it's also simpler and easier to debug.

[aht0]

hey zfs why don't you ask your daddy/oracle to change your licensing everyknow on then?

Hey Linux, why not change over to CDDL instead? It would solve the problem. Oh wait, you are stuck on GPLv2 forever..

[ssokolow]

For desktop at least.

*nod* When my mother had to choose between Dropbox and ecryptfs on her laptop, she chose ecryptfs.

[horizonbrave]

hey stratis (I know you're a different kind of beast), bcacheFS and btrfs why don't you become friends and try to be the very long awaited and verymuchdesired fully featured zfs alternative on Linux?
hey zfs why don't you ask your daddy/oracle to change your licensing everyknow on then?

[pal666]

Not sure what you mean by "checksums for parity against bitrot"? Btrfs has had checksumming for reliable data and metadata for years now.

parity was not checksummed in the past

[pal666]

Are there any News about the Raid5/6 State? It is stable and bullet proof now? And any news on checksums for parity against bitrot?

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Status#RAID56