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The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

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Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#31

Post by na85 »

cat199 wrote: post #22
kim0 wrote: post #9

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

> and integrated Considering one of thse comes default the base system and the installer can install to it, has jail(8) integration, etc etc and one of them is an addon which will never be merged to the main kernel (which is only a kernel), and because of this, will likely never be directly supported by the main linux distribution vendors, I'd say the jury is still out on this piece.. lack of base system integration…

>if I'm running $linux_flavor and Zfs crashes, and the ZoL devs blame this particular distros particular configuration/build options, toolchain, etc where do I go for a fix?

To the distro of course. How is this even a point of contention?

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#32

Post by p_l »

chasil wrote: post #18
bubblethink wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Oracle is not capable of relicensing OpenZFS, as they do not hold the copyright for it past code that is common between ZFS v28/ZPOOL v5 and OpenZFS.

From my understanding both Linus and ZoL team prefer to be separate.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#33

Post by p_l »

chasil wrote: post #19
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 no…

It's the opposite way - GPL automatically covers the final product, and does not allow for licenses that have stronger terms than itself.

CDDL is per-file license, does not automatically extend itself to the whole product. But it also has wording about patents et al, which puts it beyond direct inclusion in kernel just like MPL.

Out of tree with one degree of separation (Solaris Porting Layer) is based on the precedent of AFS implementation for linux, where the argument was that the code is not derivative of Linux kernel code, as in no way was VFS unique to linux or any other crucial part involved.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#34

Post by p_l »

MBCook wrote: post #28
ggm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely feels like it. OSX had its "we're onboard with ZFS" moment which vanished. I am believing this was a licence fubar.

I doubt it would have gotten announced w/o the approval of their giant army of lawyers.

Apple AFAIK started work with Sun in charge - it was Oracle getting its hands on Solaris tech that had Apple pull out.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#36

Post by gh02t »

ggm wrote: post #29

As a long-time BSD user (since 1982) this both saddens and heartens me. It saddens me, that the core development path in BSD was not able to sustain being the "reference" model for a wider community. There is no point pretending you can, when nobody else wants to follow that model. The heartening moment, is that linux and BSD should share code when they can, because its sensiblet to avoid pointless fork. Pointful for…

> It saddens me, that the core development path in BSD was not able to sustain being the "reference" model for a wider community.

Could you explain? FreeBSD was not the reference implementation of ZFS, illumos was. ZoL is still tied up in the OpenZFS project (as are illumos and FreeBSD), this is more a matter of rebasing onto the subproject where more development is occurring. As it was, FreeBSD's implementation was already using a Solaris/illumos compatibility shim, and it sounds like switching isn't that much work.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#37

Post by ksec »

p_l wrote: post #32
chasil wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Oracle is not capable of relicensing OpenZFS, as they do not hold the copyright for it past code that is common between ZFS v28/ZPOOL v5 and OpenZFS. From my understanding both Linus and ZoL team prefer to be separate.

Yes but what if they Relicense the common code that was between ZFS, then the OpenZFS project should be able to relicense itself.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#38

Post by loeg »

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.

Huh, the rumors I've heard all say Joyent's use of illumos is not long for this earth.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#39

Post by loeg »

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, which is ironic since not too long ago it seemed like one of the marquee features they had that Linux didn't.

There's no contradiction here. FreeBSD was never the primary contributor to (Open)ZFS (it was an Illumos thing), but we had the resources to make it a first class citizen on FreeBSD at a time when Linux wasn't doing that (mostly for licensing reasons).

It seems like the Linux world has gotten over the licensing problem one way or another, and at the end of the day Linux has something like 100x-1000x more developers to bring to bear at the problem. So between that, and illumos' imminent death, ZoL is the active upstream. FreeBSD is happy to benefit from the ZFS improvements in ZoL, especially given the collaborative spirit we've seen from the ZoL team so far. If anything, kudos to the ZoL folks for the huge amount of effort they've put in over the last handful of years.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#40

Post by qaq »

loeg wrote: post #38
jclulow wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huh, the rumors I've heard all say Joyent's use of illumos is not long for this earth.

So Bryan Cantrill (CTO) and all the former Sun eng. will abandon SmartOS @ Joyent?
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