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The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

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Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#11

Post by cat199 »

tivert wrote: post #6

> In the past few years the vast majority of new development in ZFS has taken place in DelphixOS and zfsonlinux (ZoL). Earlier this year Delphix announced that they will be moving to ZoL https://www.delphix.com/blog/kickoff-future-eko-2018 This shift means that there will be little to no net new development of Illumos. So, basically, Delphix was a (the only?) commercial user of Illumos and now they're abandoning it f…

> It also sounds like FreeBSD also lacks the resources to maintain an implementation of something like ZFS

A bit of a leap - while your theory could be correct, alternatively, if the filesystem is complicated and can be ifdefed to work for many OS's, it makes sense to combine dev efforts into one codebase rather than having multiple independently maintained forks..

not sure which is the case here.. but in any event.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#12

Post by jclulow »

tivert wrote: post #6

> In the past few years the vast majority of new development in ZFS has taken place in DelphixOS and zfsonlinux (ZoL). Earlier this year Delphix announced that they will be moving to ZoL https://www.delphix.com/blog/kickoff-future-eko-2018 This shift means that there will be little to no net new development of Illumos. So, basically, Delphix was a (the only?) commercial user of Illumos and now they're abandoning it f…

I work at Joyent (one of the largest on-record commercial users of illumos today), and am a core member of the illumos community. While we will miss the Delphix folks, they were not driving the bulk of general work on illumos.

I believe that comment by Matt/Kip reflects more of a personal opinion about how things should be (he's a stalwart FreeBSD contributor), rather than how they actually are in practice.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#14

Post by simcop2387 »

carlavilla wrote: post #3
vermaden wrote: post #2

TL;DR FreeBSD will rebase its ZFS code from Illumos to ZFS on Linux (ZoL).

If the ZFS FreeBSD code are going to be taken from ZoL, what's the difference of use ZFS on FreeBSD and GNU/Linux?

For ZFS itself, probably not much. It'd be the rest of the system you'd be selecting things for.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#15

Post by rincebrain »

rbanffy wrote: post #5

> many races and locking bugs have been fixed in ZoL and never made it back to Illumos and thus FreeBSD Why would that be? Lack of interest on sending them upstream or them being sent but never merged back?

I would guess it's because people don't always try to figure out whether bugs they find that appear to be in Linux-specific code can be reproduced in other codebases, rather than explicit lack of interest or PRs going nowhere slowly.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#16

Post by adtac »

Is there a resource that explains the historical intricacies and licensing issues surrounding ZFS from the beginning? From what I've seen, it's a clusterfuck whichever *nix OS you like.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#17

Post by Rapzid »

jclulow wrote: post #12
tivert wrote: post #6

> In the past few years the vast majority of new development in ZFS has taken place in DelphixOS and zfsonlinux (ZoL). Earlier this year Delphix announced that they will be moving to ZoL https://www.delphix.com/blog/kickoff-future-eko-2018 This shift means that there will be little to no net new development of Illumos. So, basically, Delphix was a (the only?) commercial user of Illumos and now they're abandoning it f…

I work at Joyent (one of the largest on-record commercial users of illumos today), and am a core member of the illumos community. While we will miss the Delphix folks, they were not driving the bulk of general work on illumos. I believe that comment by Matt/Kip reflects more of a personal opinion about how things should be (he's a stalwart FreeBSD contributor), rather than how they actually are in practice.

Interesting. I took it to mean there wouldn't be much more ZFS development within the illumos community.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#18

Post by chasil »

bubblethink wrote: post #8
tivert wrote: post #6

> In the past few years the vast majority of new development in ZFS has taken place in DelphixOS and zfsonlinux (ZoL). Earlier this year Delphix announced that they will be moving to ZoL https://www.delphix.com/blog/kickoff-future-eko-2018 This shift means that there will be little to no net new development of Illumos. So, basically, Delphix was a (the only?) commercial user of Illumos and now they're abandoning it f…

>which is ironic since not too long ago it seemed like one of the marquee features they had that Linux didn't That can still be somewhat true due to the licensing mess. ZoL will never be in the tree for linux. The best you can hope for is the Canonical solution which at least ensures a supported version for the distro kernel.

Unless and until Oracle relicenses ZFS in compatible terms.

My theory on how this might happen is an independent implementation of BtrFS that extends from ZFS code, sharing it whenever possible.

Should such a thing emerge and surpass current BtrFS, what else could Oracle do but throw in the towel?

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#19

Post by chasil »

adtac wrote: post #16

Is there a resource that explains the historical intricacies and licensing issues surrounding ZFS from the beginning? From what I've seen, it's a clusterfuck whichever *nix OS you like.

As I understand it, including ZFS requires all linked code to be bound by the CDDL, which the GPL cannot do.

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/

"[§]3.1 … Any Covered Software that You distribute or otherwise make available in Executable form must also be made available in Source Code form and that Source Code form must be distributed only under the terms of this License. …

"[§] 3.4 … You may not offer or impose any terms on any Covered Software in Source Code form that alters or restricts the applicable version of this License."

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#20

Post by chasil »

kim0 wrote: post #9

Hope this puts to rest the claim that zfs on bsd is better maintained and integrated than zol!

There is no cause for shame for a brilliant effort that goes the way of all things.

There is no cause for pride in newly-acquired skills that rest on the backs of giants.

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