The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD • Hacker News Board

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#81

Post by p_l » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:38 PM UTC

BurningCycles wrote: post #67

p_l wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>From my understanding both Linus and ZoL team prefer to be separate. I sincerely doubt that. If Oracle would relicense/dual license ZFS as GPLv2 compatible then I feel convinced that the ZoL contributors would happily do so as well. I can't think of a single reason why they would not want to be in mainline Linux, and I have seen nothing indicating that the Linux kernel devs would be anything but happy to have it 'ma…

I can only base this on discussions with ZoL maintainers.

From my personal look, there could be significant mess due to attempts to "remove duplication" or similar moves to make the code more linux-like. While ZFS is not the rampant layering violation some people accused it of, there's significant amount of code there (and funnily enough, there's actually overlap with some less-known linux features)

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#82

Post by p_l » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:38 PM UTC

ggm wrote: post #44

p_l wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because Lawyers? or because nobody like Larry?

Why not both?

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#83

Post by Stubb » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

Hackbraten wrote: post #80

zapzupnz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how. Those who want ZFS probably want to use specific features of it or for specific purposes but don't want to have to stop using macOS to continue working with ZFS volumes.

I agree. For me, APFS still lacks essential features, such as data integrity checks and advanced control over snapshots.

Apple wanted a file system that would run on everything from smart watches to multi-core desktops. Because, you know, those use cases are identical.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#84

Post by jamieson-becker » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 3:24 PM UTC

The most interesting (and tragic) part of this, to me, is not that ZFS is being rebased from Illumos (open source Solaris) to ZFS on Linux:

... it's that Solaris is effectively finished as an OS. It's not even its own upstream anymore for arguably the greatest modern contribution to any OS.

This is tragic, and needless. Oracle effectively shot itself in its own foot with the pointless and deliberate choice of licenses, the on-again, off-again open sourcing of Solaris, and the complete lack of commitment. Solaris had a real shot of remaining a fine alternative UNIX operating system, at least for the server side of things, but now this shot is gone.

They killed Solaris like they killed Java.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#85

Post by gruturo » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 3:54 PM UTC

jamieson-becker wrote: post #84

The most interesting (and tragic) part of this, to me, is not that ZFS is being rebased from Illumos (open source Solaris) to ZFS on Linux: ... it's that Solaris is effectively finished as an OS. It's not even its own upstream anymore for arguably the greatest modern contribution to any OS. This is tragic, and needless. Oracle effectively shot itself in its own foot with the pointless and deliberate choice of license…

You are assuming they ever even cared about Solaris.

They bought Java, because they were using it everywhere in their own product offering, and didn't want it under someone else's control (esp. if IBM would have been Sun's buyer rather than them).

Anything else which came with the purchase (Solaris, OpenOffice, VirtualBox, MySQL, the hardware business, 30K+ employees) amounted to, in their eyes, literally strings attached, that they had to pretend to care about for a while.

Even Java itself is not getting treated too well, but that was never the point - the point is not to lose control, and to monetize what they can.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#86

Post by gh02t » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

ggm wrote: post #41

gh02t wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Oh, I misunderstood. I thought the input back into Linux ZFS grew out of the (Free)BSD work. If its two independent OS trees both referring upstream to Illumos, its a minor moment. What does the solaris compatibility shim do in the end, which couldn't be done direct in the codebase? I don't like shims, it feels like the linux compatibility ABI moment where something gets added and the shim drifts, and then you can't…

I don't know a lot about it, but my understanding is that the shim is pretty thin, there to translate some slightly different syscall conventions. Compatibility shims done well (minimal to no overhead) can be very beneficial, allowing separate projects to share more code directly.

On a separate note, illumos is a really cool project. I hope this transition (and apparent reduced activity in their development on ZFS) is not a symptom of the project losing momentum. My first experiences with a computer were on SunOS and early Solaris, and illumos is the the [open source] heir to that throne.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#87

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #71

rbanffy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there enough interest in ZFS that an organization could be set up to keep a single core ZFS and coordinate its ports into different OSs in a way all ports benefit from updates and the frontier between core and OS can be clearer?

Well, this mailing list discussion is serving that function; how much more of an "organization" would you want? I suppose you could argue for having a single, explicitly OS-independent "upstream repository" rather than treating either Illumos or ZoL as upstream? I doubt there are enough developers who would want to work on ZFS generically rather than ZFS in the context of a particular OS. ZoL maintains a clear separa…

> ZoL maintains a clear separation from Linux proper for licensing reasons so I'd think they're "independent enough" to serve as upstream for non-Linux versions.

That would neatly solve the issue of ZoL patches never making it back to Illumos.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#88

Post by loeg » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

Teknoman117 wrote: post #49

loeg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I just wish the ZFS could be more tightly integrated into Linux than it can (due to licensing). Would be nice to not have two implementations of a crypto system, a raid parity computation system, block caching, allocation, etc. Oh well...

I hear you, especially on the block caching. ARC just does not interact well with FreeBSD's native block cache either.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#89

Post by loeg » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

qaq wrote: post #40

loeg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The rumor is that the decision was made above that level.

Re: The Future of ZFS in FreeBSD

#90

Post by loeg » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

jclulow wrote: post #54

loeg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't know what to tell you, except that people sometimes say things which aren't accurate when they believe it will advance their personal interests.

I can't disagree with that. :-)