[LUAU] Ah.. ZFS, and Linux and NIH

Jim Thompson jim at netgate.com
Wed Jun 13 05:05:44 PDT 2007



http://lwn.net/Articles/237905/

Quoth Linus:

> So the _last_ thing they want to do is to release the interesting stuff
> under GPLv2 (quite frankly, I think the only really interesting thing
> they have is ZFS, and even there, I suspect we'd be better off talking
> to NetApp, and seeing if they are interested in releasing WAFL for Linux).
> 
> Yes, they finally released Java under GPLv2, and they should be
> commended for that. But you should also ask yourself why, and why it
> took so long. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that other Java
> implementations started being more and more relevant?
> 
> Am I cynical? Yes. Do I expect people to act in their own interests?
> Hell yes! That's how things are _supposed_ to happen. I'm not at all
> berating Sun, what I'm trying to do here is to wake people up who seem
> to be living in some dream-world where Sun wants to help people.
> 
> So to Sun, a GPLv3-only release would actually let them look good, and
> still keep Linux from taking their interesting parts, and would allow
> them to take at least parts of Linux without giving anything back (ahh,
> the joys of license fragmentation).
> 
> Of course, they know that. And yes, maybe ZFS is worthwhile enough that
> I'm willing to go to the effort of trying to relicense the kernel. But
> quite frankly, I can almost guarantee that Sun won't release ZFS under
> the GPLv3 even if they release other parts. Because if they did, they'd
> lose the patent protection.
> 
> And yes, I'm cynical, and yes, I hope I'm wrong. And if I'm wrong, I'll
> very happily retract anything cynical I said about Sun. They _have_ done
> great things, and maybe I'm just too pessimistic about all the history
> I've seen of Sun with open source.

I can almost guarantee that Sun, in fact, *will* release ZFS under 
GPLv3, but more on that next Tuesday.

But hey, hear it from the man himself:
http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/one_plus_one_is_fifty
---
> Now despite what you suggest, we love where the FSF's GPL3 is headed.
> For a variety of mechanical reasons, GPL2 is harder for us with
> OpenSolaris - but not impossible, or even out of the question. This has
> nothing to do with being afraid of the community (if it was, we wouldn't
> be so interested in seeing ZFS everywhere, including Linux, with full
> patent indemnity)
---

So there you have it.  ZFS is sort-of Sun's next NFS.

Schwartz then goes on to invite Linus over to dinner (at his home).

I just attempted to drop a comment on Jonathan's blog, but it wouldn't 
'take' for some reason.  I'll repeat it here:

---
Go for it Jonathan.

Sun has already proved-out the openness of ZFS and dtrace via their 
integration into FreeBSD (now if your licensing people could just fix 
the license on the header files such that dtrace could be included as a 
binary build, rather than needing to be "built-in" via compilation.)

Meanwhile, t best response from the "linux camp" to ZFS so far?  <a 
href="http://code.google.com/p/zumastor/">Zumastor</a>, which is nice, 
but its literally a shell script, .vs the ZFS integration that is 
happening in both FreeBSD and MacOS X.5.

Despite the little slip-up, ZFS is <a 
href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=199903525">still 
in 10.5</a>, rumors to the contrary.  The "read-only" thing has to be 
positioning, because <a 
href="http://blogs.sun.com/erickustarz/entry/zfs_on_a_laptop">ZFS is 
great on laptops</a>, and Apple makes some great laptops.  Further, the 
Free Software license on ZFS should mean that the source code to same on 
MacOS X is available, and thus, some enterprising hacker will make it 
all work 'right'.

Nobody seems to mention that dtrace is part of MacOS 10.5 as well.

FreeBSD <a 
href="http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2007-February/069453.html">seems 
to scale better</a> on multicore systems than the Linux kernel on the 
same hardware.

At the risk of offending many, "Linux, you're surrounded!  Come out of 
the house with your hands up!"

But hey, at least you're a part of the conversation, right?

Jim
ex-Sun employee #819-something
---

Jim







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