ZFS On Linux Landing Workaround For Linux 5.0 Kernel Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ZFS On Linux Landing Workaround For Linux 5.0 Kernel Support

Last week I reported on ZFS On Linux breaking with Linux 5.0 due to some kernel symbols sought by this out-of-tree file-system driver no longer being exported and the upstream developers not willing to adjust for the ZoL code. That's still the case but the ZFS On Linux developers have a patch so at least the file-system driver will be able to build on Linux 5.0...

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

[ArthurBorsboom]

Do I understand that if Oracle would change the license to GPL, ZFS would be main-lined?

If so, how big are the chances that Oracle would do this?

[Michael]

Do I understand that if Oracle would change the license to GPL, ZFS would be main-lined?

If so, how big are the chances that Oracle would do this?

If Oracle relicensed to ZFS, it could be mainlined. (It would still need to go through the meticulous review process, etc, but at least no fundamental license objections.)

At this point, probably slim Oracle would relicense it to a GPL-compatible license.

[Bsdisbetter]

Do I understand that if Oracle would change the license to GPL, ZFS would be main-lined?

If so, how big are the chances that Oracle would do this?

Zero & none. This is old code from oracle, they have little interest in open source since Sun was gobbled up.
I don't know why they bother, but I guess it's their time to waste. the developers should save themselves the grief.

if people are so desperate to use zfs, then use it via freenas & remote storage. I just wouldn't call zfs a user-grade file system anyway. It's suited to enterprise & admins who can spend the time tuning it for performance (plenty of old sun/oracle whitepapers on just that).

[some_canuck]

if people are so desperate to use zfs, then use it via freenas & remote storage.

because nobody is using freebsd, linux has been the future for at least a decade now.

[ghibli]

Change license! :P

https://www.change.org/p/oracle-relicense-zfs-to-gplv2

[moltonel]

You'll probably want to check the performance of ZFS on Linux 4.20 vs 5.0, as checksuming without SIMD might be costly.

The license of ZFS (and Dtrace) was purposefully crafted to exclude Linux, because at the time Sun hoped to steal some of Linux's market share and it made sense to keep some technological advantage to themselves. Today these hopes are gone and Oracle has abandoned everything it acquired from Sun (yes, even MySQL is only a shadow of its former self). You could have pressured Sun to admit failure and relicense ZFS/Dtrace/Solaris/etc to not let great tech go to waste, but Oracle just doesn't care. It's a real pity, because as long as ZFS remains out of tree, it'll be a non-starter for most people, including me.

[mskarbek]

Do I understand that if Oracle would change the license to GPL, ZFS would be main-lined?

If so, how big are the chances that Oracle would do this?

First of all, remember that ZoL is based on OpenZFS, not Oracle ZFS. OpenZFS is a fork of what ZFS was in OpenSolaris 8 years ago and since then it was developed independently. Simple relicensing Oracle ZFS will not solve all the issues. If (highly unlikely) Oracle will relicense their implementation of ZFS it would open path to a discussion about relicensing all the divergent code in OpenZFS but also created a conflict with Oracle because currently those two implementations are incompatible and Oracle would do that only to push their version.

[starshipeleven]

how big are the chances that Oracle would do this?

Less than zero. Oracle is investing in btrfs development (there are at least a couple Oracle guys posting some significant code on the btrfs mailing list), as it is one of the features of their "unbreakable Linux" RHEL clone distro thing.

[oiaohm]

You'll probably want to check the performance of ZFS on Linux 4.20 vs 5.0, as checksuming without SIMD might be costly.

The license of ZFS (and Dtrace) was purposefully crafted to exclude Linux, because at the time Sun hoped to steal some of Linux's market share and it made sense to keep some technological advantage to themselves. Today these hopes are gone and Oracle has abandoned everything it acquired from Sun (yes, even MySQL is only a shadow of its former self). You could have pressured Sun to admit failure and relicense ZFS/Dtrace/Solaris/etc to not let great tech go to waste, but Oracle just doesn't care. It's a real pity, because as long as ZFS remains out of tree, it'll be a non-starter for most people, including me.

http://vger.kernel.org/lpc_bpf2018_talks/DTrace-BPF-LPC-2018.pdf

Dtrace for Linux is slowly being made using less and less CDDL parts on LInux and more GPLv2 parts.

First of all, remember that ZoL is based on OpenZFS, not Oracle ZFS. OpenZFS is a fork of what ZFS was in OpenSolaris 8 years ago and since then it was developed independently. Simple relicensing Oracle ZFS will not solve all the issues. If (highly unlikely) Oracle will relicense their implementation of ZFS it would open path to a discussion about relicensing all the divergent code in OpenZFS but also created a conflict with Oracle because currently those two implementations are incompatible and Oracle would do that only to push their version.

This is also ZoL mistake 8 years ago.

https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/licenses

Why was not all new submits joint licensed under CDDL and some other GPLv2 compatible license unless they never wanting to be Linux compatible. The person submitting code as the copyright holder can assign multi licenses.

ZoL has been digging themselves a hole for a very long time. It about time they start digging their way out correctly.

If they had joint licensed it would have been possible to slowly remove all need for CDDL code from the kernel module.