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  • XorEaxEax
    replied
    Originally posted by Sergio View Post
    I see.
    I still fail to see why both BTRFS and ZFS are being pushed by Oracle.
    I don't see how Oracle is 'pushing' ZFS at all. They no longer open source any enhancements and from what I recall reading there's not much development going on from Oracle's side.

    As I recall this came from a developer working on the open ZFS implementation so there might have been some bias in that reporting.

    Overall I don't think Solaris or ZFS were any key parts in Oracle's Sun aquisition, the 'prized' Sun IP as I gather were Java (which has a strong enterprise market and Oracle also hoped for a patent shakedown on Google which failed) together with MySQL, the latter mainly as a means to kill off competition to their own Oracle database offerings, which also seems to be failing we're seeing an exodus of MySQL users towards MariaDB.

    Originally posted by Sergio View Post
    Unless Oracle provides BTRFS as an inferior file system for their non-Solaris solutions, and leave their best technology for Solaris solutions.
    Again I don't see any indication that Oracle is pushing Solaris at all, but then again I must admit that I haven't been that interested in following Solaris commercial offerings.

    Leave a comment:


  • Sergio
    replied
    Originally posted by johnc View Post
    Btrfs was created by Oracle before they acquired Sun. So it was a competing technology. The question now is, what motivation do they have to push Btrfs? Maybe for their Oracle Linux solutions. But right now their primary focus seems to be Oracle Solaris.
    I see.
    I still fail to see why both BTRFS and ZFS are being pushed by Oracle. If both technologies are really "the same" (that is, in this case, BTRFS is not inferior to ZFS), why not just relicense ZFS and stop wasting resources on BTRFS? Unless Oracle provides BTRFS as an inferior file system for their non-Solaris solutions, and leave their best technology for Solaris solutions.
    But, as XorEaxEax says, not only Oracle is behind BTRFS, so I doubt it is indeed an inferior solution, in which case, again, I don't see what Oracle is trying to do...

    Leave a comment:


  • XorEaxEax
    replied
    Originally posted by johnc View Post
    So it was a competing technology. The question now is, what motivation do they have to push Btrfs? Maybe for their Oracle Linux solutions.
    Well obviously for their Linux offerings, these days however it's not just them developing BTRFS, we have Red Hat, Intel, Fujitsu, SUSE and many other companies actively developing BTRFS.

    Also it's doesn't have any copyright attribution and is licenced under GPL so it will remain a fully open project.

    Originally posted by johnc View Post
    But right now their primary focus seems to be Oracle Solaris.
    What do you base this on? From what I've read from Solaris fans they are pissed on Oracle for not focusing on Solaris and instead pushing their Linux efforts like their repackaged RHEL distribution called Unbreakable Linux.

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  • johnc
    replied
    Originally posted by Sergio View Post
    Ok, so I restate:

    1. If ORACLE didn't want to hand out the technical merits of ZFS (which it obviously has) to competition, why did they create BTRFS? Can we imply from this that BTRFS is deliberately inferior? If not, why not just give away ZFS?
    Btrfs was created by Oracle before they acquired Sun. So it was a competing technology. The question now is, what motivation do they have to push Btrfs? Maybe for their Oracle Linux solutions. But right now their primary focus seems to be Oracle Solaris.

    Leave a comment:


  • Sergio
    replied
    Originally posted by XorEaxEax View Post
    Sun had nothing to do with BTRFS, it originated at Oracle.
    Ok, so I restate:

    1. If ORACLE didn't want to hand out the technical merits of ZFS (which it obviously has) to competition, why did they create BTRFS? Can we imply from this that BTRFS is deliberately inferior? If not, why not just give away ZFS?

    Leave a comment:


  • XorEaxEax
    replied
    Originally posted by johnc View Post
    Could Oracle even re-license it as GPL? I thought they had to get permission from all the contributors?
    I assumed that Sun required copyright assignment when someone contributed to their official version of ZFS, and that since Oracle bought ZFS together with their Sun aquisition they also gained full copyright over Sun's ZFS version (they can't of course take away the right to use existing CDDL licenced code under CDDL) they could re-licence/dual licence it at will.

    But maybe you're right and they can't re-licence it if Sun did not require copyright assignment to them, I don't know.

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  • johnc
    replied
    Could Oracle even re-license it as GPL? I thought they had to get permission from all the contributors?

    Leave a comment:


  • XorEaxEax
    replied
    Originally posted by staalmannen View Post
    One can always hope for Oracle doing the right thing (they are not as attached to Solaris). They have done some effort in getting DTrace on Linux, so perhaps...

    http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/ar...x-1956556.html
    As I said, I would find this plausible (Oracle offering ZFS under GPL) if it weren't for all the resources they've invested into BTRFS.

    Leave a comment:


  • XorEaxEax
    replied
    Originally posted by Sergio View Post
    Some things I don't get:
    1. If Sun didn't want to hand out the technical merits of ZFS (which it obviously has) to competition, why did they create BTRFS?
    Sun had nothing to do with BTRFS, it originated at Oracle.

    Originally posted by Sergio View Post
    2. Maybe this one everybody knows, but I personally fail to understand: what EXACTLY makes CDDL incompatible with GPL?
    As I recall it had to do with attribution notices and patent retaliation causing termination of distribution rights.

    Originally posted by Sergio View Post
    What could happen if ZFS were included in the Linux kernel? Lawsuits?
    Certainly it could, not that it would ever be included in the kernel while licenced as CDDL to begin with.

    Leave a comment:


  • Sergio
    replied
    Originally posted by XorEaxEax View Post
    The GPL incompability of CDDL was obviously a deliberate decision made by Sun's management as why the hell would they want to hand over their technical advantages to the competitor (Linux) which was eating them alive in the market, same goes for DTrace. Not that it ended up doing them much good.

    Now the chance that Oracle (who know owns ZFS) would re-licence it under GPL would have been a possibility if they weren't so invested in the GPL licenced BTRFS (which they created AFAIK), and has basically put their ZFS offering on proprietary maintenance mode.

    So ZFS will remain incompatible with inclusion into Linux, which again was the whole point with it being licenced under CDDL as the licence was crafted for that very purpose.
    Some things I don't get:

    1. If Sun didn't want to hand out the technical merits of ZFS (which it obviously has) to competition, why did they create BTRFS? Can we imply from this that BTRFS is deliberately inferior? If not, why not just give away ZFS?

    2. Maybe this one everybody knows, but I personally fail to understand: what EXACTLY makes CDDL incompatible with GPL? What could happen if ZFS were included in the Linux kernel? Lawsuits?

    Thanks in advance.

    Leave a comment:

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