zfs discuss - Aug 2010 - Opensolaris is apparently dead

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/opensolaris_is_dead/

I''m a bit surprised at this development... Oracle really just
doesn''t get
it.  The part that''s most disturbing to me is the fact they
won''t be
releasing nightly snapshots.  It appears they''ve stopped Illumos in its
tracks before it really even got started (perhaps that explains the timing
of this press release) as well as killed the Opensolaris community.

Quite frankly, I think there will be an even faster decline of Solaris
installed base after this move.  I know I have no interest in pushing it
anywhere after this mess.

--Tim
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On 08/13/2010 01:39 PM, Tim Cook wrote:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/opensolaris_is_dead/
>
> I''m a bit surprised at this development... Oracle really just
doesn''t
> get it.  The part that''s most disturbing to me is the fact they
won''t be
> releasing nightly snapshots.  It appears they''ve stopped Illumos
in its
> tracks before it really even got started (perhaps that explains the
> timing of this press release)
Wrong. Be patient, with the pace of current Illumos development it soon 
will have all the closed binaries liberated and ready to sync up with 
promised ON code drops as dictated by GPL and CDDL licenses.

On Aug 13, 2010, at 16:39, Tim Cook wrote:
> I''m a bit surprised at this development... Oracle really just  
> doesn''t get it.
Why are you surprised? Larry Ellison is about making money, not  
community. He''s been fairly successful at it as well.

Sun was an engineering company at its heart; Oracle is sales.

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 3:54 PM, Erast <erast at gnusolaris.org> wrote:
>
>
> On 08/13/2010 01:39 PM, Tim Cook wrote:
>
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/opensolaris_is_dead/
>>
>> I''m a bit surprised at this development... Oracle really just
doesn''t
>> get it.  The part that''s most disturbing to me is the fact
they won''t be
>> releasing nightly snapshots.  It appears they''ve stopped
Illumos in its
>> tracks before it really even got started (perhaps that explains the
>> timing of this press release)
>>
>
> Wrong. Be patient, with the pace of current Illumos development it soon
> will have all the closed binaries liberated and ready to sync up with
> promised ON code drops as dictated by GPL and CDDL licenses.
>

Given the path they are heading down, there''s absolutely 0 guarantee
that
new features added to Solaris will be opened with CDDL.  Furthermore,
there''s nothing guaranteeing the community is able to reproduce those
features on their own if things do shutdown more.  That''s clearly by
design.

Obviously Illumos can fork, but that''s still ''stopped dead in
its tracks'' as
far as I am concerned.

--Tim
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On 8/13/10 3:39 PM -0500 Tim Cook wrote:
> Quite frankly, I think there will be an even faster decline of Solaris
> installed base after this move.  I know I have no interest in pushing it
> anywhere after this mess.
I haven''t met anyone who uses Solaris because of OpenSolaris.

On Fri, Aug 13 at 19:03, Frank Cusack wrote:
>On 8/13/10 3:39 PM -0500 Tim Cook wrote:
>>Quite frankly, I think there will be an even faster decline of Solaris
>>installed base after this move.  I know I have no interest in pushing it
>>anywhere after this mess.
>
>I haven''t met anyone who uses Solaris because of OpenSolaris.
That''s because the features that made opensolaris so attractive were
the bleeding-edge zfs versions and comstar, and i don''t think either
had yet been backported to Solaris.

I''m sure Solaris uptake would increase over time, once those features
made it into the "main" OS.

-- 
Eric D. Mudama
edmudama at mail.bounceswoosh.org

> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Frank Cusack
> 
> I haven''t met anyone who uses Solaris because of OpenSolaris.
What rock do you live under?

Very few people would bother paying for solaris/zfs if they couldn''t
try it
for free and get a good taste of what it''s valuable for.

Erast wrote:
>
>
> On 08/13/2010 01:39 PM, Tim Cook wrote:
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/opensolaris_is_dead/
>>
>> I''m a bit surprised at this development... Oracle really just
doesn''t
>> get it.  The part that''s most disturbing to me is the fact
they won''t be
>> releasing nightly snapshots.  It appears they''ve stopped
Illumos in its
>> tracks before it really even got started (perhaps that explains the
>> timing of this press release)
>
> Wrong. Be patient, with the pace of current Illumos development it 
> soon will have all the closed binaries liberated and ready to sync up 
> with promised ON code drops as dictated by GPL and CDDL licenses.
Illumos is just a source tree at this point.  You''re delusional, 
misinformed, or have some big wonderful secret if you believe you have 
all the bases covered for a pure open source distribution though..

What''s closed binaries liberated really mean to you?

Does it mean
    a. You copy over the binary libCrun and continue to use some version 
of Sun Studio to build onnv-gate
    b. You debug the problems with and start to use ancient gcc-3 (at 
the probably expense of performance regressions which most people would 
find unacceptable)
    c. Your definition is narrow and has missed some closed binaries


I think it''s great people are still hopeful, working hard and going to 
steward this forward, but I wonder.. What pace are you referring to?  
The last commit to illumos-gate was 6 days ago and you''re already not 
even keeping it in sync..  Can you even build it yet and if so where''s 
the binaries?

On 8/13/10 9:02 PM, "C. Bergstr?m" wrote:
> Erast wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 08/13/2010 01:39 PM, Tim Cook wrote:
>>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/opensolaris_is_dead/
>>>
>>> I''m a bit surprised at this development... Oracle really
just doesn''t
>>> get it.  The part that''s most disturbing to me is the fact
they
>>> won''t be
>>> releasing nightly snapshots.  It appears they''ve stopped
Illumos in its
>>> tracks before it really even got started (perhaps that explains the
>>> timing of this press release)
>>
>> Wrong. Be patient, with the pace of current Illumos development it
>> soon will have all the closed binaries liberated and ready to sync up
>> with promised ON code drops as dictated by GPL and CDDL licenses.
> Illumos is just a source tree at this point.  You''re delusional,
> misinformed, or have some big wonderful secret if you believe you have
> all the bases covered for a pure open source distribution though..
>
> What''s closed binaries liberated really mean to you?
>
> Does it mean
>    a. You copy over the binary libCrun and continue to use some
> version of Sun Studio to build onnv-gate
>    b. You debug the problems with and start to use ancient gcc-3 (at
> the probably expense of performance regressions which most people
> would find unacceptable)
>    c. Your definition is narrow and has missed some closed binaries
>
>
> I think it''s great people are still hopeful, working hard and
going to
> steward this forward, but I wonder.. What pace are you referring to? 
> The last commit to illumos-gate was 6 days ago and you''re already
not
> even keeping it in sync..  Can you even build it yet and if so
where''s
> the binaries?
Illumos is 2 weeks old.  Lets cut it a little slack. :)


benr.

2010/8/13 "C. Bergstr?m" <codestr0m at
osunix.org>:
> Erast wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 08/13/2010 01:39 PM, Tim Cook wrote:
>>>
>>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/opensolaris_is_dead/
>>>
>>> I''m a bit surprised at this development... Oracle really
just doesn''t
>>> get it. ?The part that''s most disturbing to me is the fact
they won''t be
>>> releasing nightly snapshots. ?It appears they''ve stopped
Illumos in its
>>> tracks before it really even got started (perhaps that explains the
>>> timing of this press release)
>>
>> Wrong. Be patient, with the pace of current Illumos development it soon
>> will have all the closed binaries liberated and ready to sync up with
>> promised ON code drops as dictated by GPL and CDDL licenses.
>
> Illumos is just a source tree at this point. ?You''re delusional,
> misinformed, or have some big wonderful secret if you believe you have all
> the bases covered for a pure open source distribution though..
>
> What''s closed binaries liberated really mean to you?
>
Currently.. i18n library.
> Does it mean
> ? a. You copy over the binary libCrun and continue to use some version of
> Sun Studio to build onnv-gate
> ? b. You debug the problems with and start to use ancient gcc-3 (at the
> probably expense of performance regressions which most people would find
> unacceptable)
For now, the compiler is SS.
> ? c. Your definition is narrow and has missed some closed binaries
>
All of them will be opened. Soon.
>
> I think it''s great people are still hopeful, working hard and
going to
> steward this forward, but I wonder.. What pace are you referring to? ?The
> last commit to illumos-gate was 6 days ago and you''re already not
even
> keeping it in sync.. ?Can you even build it yet and if so where''s
the
> binaries?
>
The project is a couple weeks old. There''s already a webrevs for 145
and 146 merges, and another one for ksh93 port. There''s been some
other active discussions on developer at lists.illumos.org. If not
already, you should definitely subscribe to the lists.

~Anil

http://www.illumos.org/projects/site/wiki/Mailing_Lists
http://gdamore.blogspot.com/2010/08/hand-may-be-forced.html

On 08/13/10 09:02 PM, "C. Bergstr?m" wrote:
> Erast wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 08/13/2010 01:39 PM, Tim Cook wrote:
>>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/opensolaris_is_dead/
>>>
>>> I''m a bit surprised at this development... Oracle really
just doesn''t
>>> get it.  The part that''s most disturbing to me is the fact
they
>>> won''t be
>>> releasing nightly snapshots.  It appears they''ve stopped
Illumos in its
>>> tracks before it really even got started (perhaps that explains the
>>> timing of this press release)
>>
>> Wrong. Be patient, with the pace of current Illumos development it 
>> soon will have all the closed binaries liberated and ready to sync up 
>> with promised ON code drops as dictated by GPL and CDDL licenses.
> Illumos is just a source tree at this point.  You''re delusional, 
> misinformed, or have some big wonderful secret if you believe you have 
> all the bases covered for a pure open source distribution though..
>
> What''s closed binaries liberated really mean to you?
>
> Does it mean
>    a. You copy over the binary libCrun and continue to use some 
> version of Sun Studio to build onnv-gate
>    b. You debug the problems with and start to use ancient gcc-3 (at 
> the probably expense of performance regressions which most people 
> would find unacceptable)
>    c. Your definition is narrow and has missed some closed binaries
>
>
> I think it''s great people are still hopeful, working hard and
going to
> steward this forward, but I wonder.. What pace are you referring to?  
> The last commit to illumos-gate was 6 days ago and you''re already
not
> even keeping it in sync..  Can you even build it yet and if so
where''s
> the binaries?

I was on vacation.  Give me a break.  There will be lots more in the 
coming week.

     - Garrett
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
>

On 08/13/2010 10:21 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
>
> Very few people would bother paying for solaris/zfs if they
couldn''t try it
> for free and get a good taste of what it''s valuable for.
>
My guess is that the theoretical Solaris Express 11 will be crippled by any or 
all of: missing features, artificial limits on functionality, or a restrictive 
license. I consider the latter most likely, much like the OTN downloads of 
Oracle DB, where you can download and run it for development purposes, but
don''t
even THINK of using it as a production server for your home or small business. 
Of course, an Oracle DB is overkill for such a purpose anyway, but
that''s a
different kettle of fish.

For me, Solaris had zero mindshare since its beginning, on account of being 
prohibitively expensive. When OpenSolaris came out, I basically ignored it once 
I found out that it was not completely open source, since I figured that there 
was too great a risk of a train wreck like we have now. Then, I decided this 
winter to give ZFS a spin, decided I liked it, and built a home server around it
- and within weeks Oracle took over, tore up the tracks without telling anybody,
and made the train wreck I feared into a reality. I should have listened to my 
own advice.

As much as I''d like to be proven wrong, I don''t expect SX11 to
be useful for my
purposes, so my home file server options are:

1. Nexenta Core. It''s maintained, and (somewhat) more up-to-date than
the late
OpenSolaris. As I''ve been running Linux since the days when a 486 was a
cutting-edge system, I don''t mind having a GNU userland. Of course, now
that
Oracle has slammed the door, it''ll be difficult for it to move forward
- which
leads to:

2. IllumOS. In 20/20 hindsight, a project like this should have begun as soon as
OpenSolaris first came out the door, but better late than never. In the short 
term, it''s not yet an option, but in the long term, it may be the best
(or only)
hope. At the very least, I won''t be able to use it until an open mpt
driver is
in place.

3. Just stick with b134. Actually, I''ve managed to compile my way up to
b142,
but I''m having trouble getting beyond it - my attempts to install later
versions
just result in new boot environments with the old kernel, even with the latest 
pkg-gate code in place. Still, even if I get the latest code to install,
it''s
not viable for the long term unless I''m willing to live with stasis.

4. FreeBSD. I could live with it if I had to, but I''m not fond of its
packaging
system; the last time I tried it I couldn''t get the package tools to
pull a
quick binary update. Even IPS works better. I could go to the ports tree 
instead, but if I wanted to spend my time recompiling everything, I''d
run Gentoo
instead.

5. Linux/FUSE. It works, but it''s slow.
5a. Compile-it-yourself ZFS kernel module for Linux. This would be a hassle 
(though DKMS would make it less of an issue), but usable - except that the 
current module only supports zvols, so it''s not ready yet, unless I
wanted to
run ext3-on-zvol. Neither of these solutions are practical for booting from ZFS.

6. Abandon ZFS completely and go back to LVM/MD-RAID. I ran it for years before 
switching to ZFS, and it works - but it''s a bitter pill to swallow
after
drinking the ZFS Kool-Aid.

On 14-8-2010 14:58, Russ Price wrote:
> 6. Abandon ZFS completely and go back to LVM/MD-RAID. I ran it for 
> years before switching to ZFS, and it works - but it''s a bitter
pill
> to swallow after drinking the ZFS Kool-Aid.
Nice summary. ;-)
I switched to FreeBSD for the moment and it works very well although I 
have some ZFS issues I do not have in the latest OpenSolaris b134 
release. The pkg system is fine too. Binary updates are a piece of cake. 
I''m no fan of LVM and although I have some ZFS issues now I''m
sure they
will be solved. In the meantime I created some gmirrors and they do the 
job well. I''d love to see the day coming I''m able to use ZFS
again.
Kool-Aid? An understatement. Once used to ZFs it is very difficult to do 
without. My main hopes are for FreeBSD or maybe Illumos, the latter has 
a long way to go yet.

> 3. Just stick with b134. Actually, I''ve managed to compile my way
up to b142, but I''m having trouble getting beyond it - my attempts to
install later versions just result in new boot environments with the old kernel,
even with the latest pkg-gate code in place. Still, even if I get the latest
code to install, it''s not viable for the long term unless I''m
willing to live with stasis.
I run build 146. There have been some heads-up messages on the topic. You need
b137 or later in order to build b143 or later. Plus the latest packaging bits
and other stuff.
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/on-discuss/2010-June/001932.html

When compiling b146, it''s good to read this first:
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/on-discuss/2010-August/002110.html Instead
of using the tagged onnv_146 code, you have to apply all the changesets up to
13011:dc5824d1233f.
  
> 6. Abandon ZFS completely and go back to LVM/MD-RAID. I ran it for years
before switching to ZFS, and it works - but it''s a bitter pill to
swallow after drinking the ZFS Kool-Aid.
Or Btrfs. It may not be ready for production now, but it could become a serious
alternative to ZFS in one year''s time or so. (I have been using it for
some time with absolutely no issues, but some people (Edward Shishkin) say it
has obvious bugs related to fragmentation.)

Andrej

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Really sad.
Will all the opensolaris-related mailing lists be dead?

Thanks.

Fred
> -----Original Message-----
> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Andrej Podzimek
> Sent: ???, ?? 14, 2010 23:36
> To: Russ Price
> Cc: zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] Opensolaris is apparently dead
> 
> > 3. Just stick with b134. Actually, I''ve managed to compile my
way up
> to b142, but I''m having trouble getting beyond it - my attempts to
> install later versions just result in new boot environments with the
> old kernel, even with the latest pkg-gate code in place. Still, even if
> I get the latest code to install, it''s not viable for the long
term
> unless I''m willing to live with stasis.
> 
> I run build 146. There have been some heads-up messages on the topic.
> You need b137 or later in order to build b143 or later. Plus the latest
> packaging bits and other stuff.
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/on-discuss/2010-June/001932.html
> 
> When compiling b146, it''s good to read this first:
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/on-discuss/2010-
> August/002110.html Instead of using the tagged onnv_146 code, you have
> to apply all the changesets up to 13011:dc5824d1233f.
> 
> > 6. Abandon ZFS completely and go back to LVM/MD-RAID. I ran it for
> years before switching to ZFS, and it works - but it''s a bitter
pill to
> swallow after drinking the ZFS Kool-Aid.
> 
> Or Btrfs. It may not be ready for production now, but it could become a
> serious alternative to ZFS in one year''s time or so. (I have been
using
> it for some time with absolutely no issues, but some people (Edward
> Shishkin) say it has obvious bugs related to fragmentation.)
> 
> Andrej

On Fri, 13 Aug 2010, Tim Cook wrote:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/opensolaris_is_dead/
"Oracle will spend *more* money on OpenSolaris development than Sun
did."

At least, as a Sun customer, that''s the line they were trying to feed
me
during the buy out.

Why exactly would I want to do business with a company that lies to its
customers?


-- 
Paul B. Henson  |  (909) 979-6361  |  http://www.csupomona.edu/~henson/
Operating Systems and Network Analyst  |  henson at csupomona.edu
California State Polytechnic University  |  Pomona CA 91768

On 08/14/10 09:36 AM, Paul B. Henson wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Aug 2010, Tim Cook wrote:
>
>    
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/opensolaris_is_dead/
>>      
> "Oracle will spend *more* money on OpenSolaris development than Sun
did."
>
> At least, as a Sun customer, that''s the line they were trying to
feed me
> during the buy out.
>
> Why exactly would I want to do business with a company that lies to its
> customers?
>
>    
They''ve *never* said "OpenSolaris" in this context.  The
quote was for
"Solaris".

Oracle *will* spend more on Solaris than Sun did.  I believe that.

The question is whether they will get as much for their development 
dollar as Sun did.  With the brain drain happening (I know things I 
can''t say, but I was one of the parties to leave a couple of months 
ago), I think that it will cost Oracle more money to keep Solaris 
development active than it did Sun.  Of course, they won''t be
"wasting"
money on things like community collaboration, open ARC review, etc...

     -- Garrett

> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Russ Price
> 
> For me, Solaris had zero mindshare since its beginning, on account of
> being
> prohibitively expensive. 
I hear that a lot, and I don''t get it.  $400/yr does move it out of
peoples''
basements generally, and keeps sol10 out of enormous clustering facilities
that don''t have special purposes or free alternatives.  But I
wouldn''t call
it prohibitively expensive, for a whole lot of purposes.

> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Andrej Podzimek
> 
> Or Btrfs. It may not be ready for production now, but it could become a
> serious alternative to ZFS in one year''s time or so. (I have been
using
I will much sooner pay for sol11 instead of use btrfs.  Stability & speed
& maturity greatly outweigh a few hundred dollars a year, if you run your
business on it.

On 8/14/10 Aug 14, 2:57 PM, "Edward Ned Harvey" <shill at
nedharvey.com> wrote:
>> Or Btrfs. It may not be ready for production now, but it could become a
>> serious alternative to ZFS in one year''s time or so. (I have
been using
> 
> I will much sooner pay for sol11 instead of use btrfs.  Stability &
speed &
> maturity greatly outweigh a few hundred dollars a year, if you run your
> business on it.
Flip side is that if Oracle convinces enough people that ZFS is a shrinking
market (how long do you think the BSDs will support a proprietary
filesystem?) then there will be a lot more interest in the BTRFS project,
much of it from the same folks who have experience producing
enterprise-grade ZFS. Speaking for myself, if Solaris 11 doesn''t
include
COMSTAR I''m going to have to take a serious look at another alternative
for
our show storage towers....
-- 
Dave Pooser, ACSA
Manager of Information Services
Alford Media  http://www.alfordmedia.com

On 8/13/10 11:21 PM -0400 Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
>> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
>> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Frank Cusack
>>
>> I haven''t met anyone who uses Solaris because of OpenSolaris.
>
> What rock do you live under?
>
> Very few people would bother paying for solaris/zfs if they
couldn''t try
> it for free and get a good taste of what it''s valuable for.
I also don''t know anyone who pays for Solaris.  It''s already
free and you
can already try it for free.

What''s your point?

On 8/14/10 7:58 AM -0500 Russ Price wrote:
> My guess is that the theoretical Solaris Express 11 will be crippled by
> any or all of: missing features, artificial limits on functionality, or a
> restrictive license. I consider the latter most likely, much like the OTN
On 8/14/10 3:15 PM -0400 Dave Pooser wrote:
> enterprise-grade ZFS. Speaking for myself, if Solaris 11 doesn''t
include
> COMSTAR I''m going to have to take a serious look at another
alternative
> for our show storage towers....
Wow, what leads you guys to even imagine that S11 wouldn''t contain
comstar, etc.?  *Of course* it will contain most of the bits that
are current today in OpenSolaris.

Licensing, yes, I wouldn''t trust Oracle in that department.  They
don''t
care so much about Solaris itself as they do about Oracle on Solaris.
Plenty of companies run Solaris/Oracle almost as an appliance, with
very little additional Solaris.  I''m sure Oracle is happy to continue
or even promote that, and clearly Solaris will now be even more of
a preferred platform for Oracle than ever.

On 8/14/10 7:58 AM -0500 Russ Price wrote:
> For me, Solaris had zero mindshare since its beginning, on account of
> being prohibitively expensive. When OpenSolaris came out, I basically
Very true, early on, but Solaris became free (for limited uses, but enough
to test it) quite a long time before OpenSolaris was ever even born.  Then
it became "very free", maybe a year or 2 before OpenSolaris was
launched?

On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 5:58 AM, Russ Price <rjp_sun at fubegra.net>
wrote:
> 4. FreeBSD. I could live with it if I had to, but I''m not fond of
its
> packaging system; the last time I tried it I couldn''t get the
package tools
> to pull a quick binary update. Even IPS works better. I could go to the
> ports tree instead, but if I wanted to spend my time recompiling
everything,
> I''d run Gentoo instead.
freebsd-update provides binary updates for the OS.
portmaster can do binary-only updates for ports (and can even run
without /usr/ports installed).  Same with portupgrade.  And if you
really don''t want to use the ports tree, there''s pkg_upgrade
(part of
the bsdadminscripts port).

IOW, if you don''t want to compile things on FreeBSD, you don''t
have to.  :)

-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash at gmail.com

>> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
>> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Andrej Podzimek
>>
>> Or Btrfs. It may not be ready for production now, but it could become a
>> serious alternative to ZFS in one year''s time or so. (I have
been using
>
> I will much sooner pay for sol11 instead of use btrfs.  Stability& 
speed&  maturity greatly outweigh a few hundred dollars a year, if you run
your business on it.
Well, a typical conversation about speed and stability usually boils down to
this:

A: I''ve heard that XYZ is unstable and slow.
B: Are you sure? Have you tested XYZ? What are your benchmark results? Have you
had any issues?
A: No. I *have* *not* *tested* XYZ. I think XYZ is so unstable and slow that
it''s not worth testing.

It is true that the userspace utilities for Btrfs are immature. But nobody says
Btrfs is ready for business deployments *right* *now*. I merely said it could
become a serious alternative to ZFS in one year''s time.

As far as stability is concerned, I haven''t had any issues so far.
Neither with ZFS, nor with Btrfs.

As far as performance is concerned, some people probably own a crystal ball.
This explains their ability to guess whether Btrfs will outperform ZFS or not,
once the first "stable" release of Btrfs is out. Unfortunately,
I''m not a prophet. ;-) So I''ll have to make a decision based
on benchmarks and thorough testing on some of my machines, as soon as the first
"stable" release of Btrfs is out.

Andrej

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On 8/14/10 1:12 PM, Frank Cusack wrote:
>
> Wow, what leads you guys to even imagine that S11 wouldn''t contain
> comstar, etc.?  *Of course* it will contain most of the bits that
> are current today in OpenSolaris.
That''s a very good question actually.  I would think that COMSTAR would
stay because its used by the Fishworks appliance... however, COMSTAR is
a competitive advantage for DIY storage solutions.  Maybe they will rip
it out of S11 and make it an add-on or something.   That would suck.

I guess the only real reason you can''t yank COMSTAR is because its now
the basis for iSCSI Target support.  But again, there is nothing saying
that Target support has to be part of the standard OS offering.

Scary to think about. :)

benr.

>That''s a very good question actually. I would think that COMSTAR
would
>stay because its used by the Fishworks appliance... however, COMSTAR is
>a competitive advantage for DIY storage solutions. Maybe they will rip
>it out of S11 and make it an add-on or something. That would suck.
>I guess the only real reason you can''t yank COMSTAR is because its
now
>the basis for iSCSI Target support. But again, there is nothing saying
>that Target support has to be part of the standard OS offering.
>Scary to think about. :)
>benr.
That would be the sensible commercial decision, and kill off the competition in
the storage market using OpenSolaris based product.

I haven''t found a linux that can reliably spin the 100Tb I currently
have behind OpenSolaris and ZFS.
Luckily b134 doesn''t seem to have any major issues, and I''m
currently looking into a USB boot/raidz root combination for 1U storage.

I ran Red Hat 9 with updated packages for quite a few years.
As long as the kernel is stable, and you can work through the hurdles, it can
still do the job.


Mark.
-- 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

On 08/14/10 03:32 PM, Mark Bennett wrote:
>> That''s a very good question actually. I would think that
COMSTAR would
>> stay because its used by the Fishworks appliance... however, COMSTAR is
>> a competitive advantage for DIY storage solutions. Maybe they will rip
>> it out of S11 and make it an add-on or something. That would suck.
>>      
>
>    
>> I guess the only real reason you can''t yank COMSTAR is because
its now
>> the basis for iSCSI Target support. But again, there is nothing saying
>> that Target support has to be part of the standard OS offering.
>>      
>    
>> Scary to think about. :)
>>      
>    
>> benr.
>>      
> That would be the sensible commercial decision, and kill off the
competition in the storage market using OpenSolaris based product.
>    
No, it wouldn''t.  We (Nexenta) are probably the biggest player here. 
If
Oracle yanks the code, we''ll keep a copy ourselves.  Indeed, we are in 
the process of some enhancements to this code which will make it into 
Illumos, but probably not into Oracle Solaris unless they pull from 
Illumos. :-)
> I haven''t found a linux that can reliably spin the 100Tb I
currently have behind OpenSolaris and ZFS.
> Luckily b134 doesn''t seem to have any major issues, and
I''m currently looking into a USB boot/raidz root combination for 1U
storage.
>
> I ran Red Hat 9 with updated packages for quite a few years.
> As long as the kernel is stable, and you can work through the hurdles, it
can still do the job.
>
>    
Sure.

     - Garrett
> Mark.
>

The problem is: The first time the a software release is considered 
stable, it takes significant time for the uptake and the moment it''s 
really stable. ZFS was introduced almost 5 years ago to the public and 
just now it gets mayor uptake in the field. I still don''t get it, why 
brtfs should be exception of the rule, that everything around storage is 
under most conservative consideration by people (even for people just 
using at home: Telling your wife that you just lost your wedding photos 
by testing that new filesystem will give you an escalation meeting near 
to hell and the contract penalties may force you to sleep in the living 
room for years). The fast uptake of ext1-4 was just owed to the fact, 
that the changes was just evolutionary.

On 14.08.2010 23:26, Andrej Podzimek wrote:
>>> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
>>> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Andrej Podzimek
>>>
>>> Or Btrfs. It may not be ready for production now, but it could
become a
>>> serious alternative to ZFS in one year''s time or so. (I
have been using
>>
>> I will much sooner pay for sol11 instead of use btrfs.  Stability&
>> speed&  maturity greatly outweigh a few hundred dollars a year, if 
>> you run your business on it.
>
> Well, a typical conversation about speed and stability usually boils 
> down to this:
>
> A: I''ve heard that XYZ is unstable and slow.
> B: Are you sure? Have you tested XYZ? What are your benchmark results? 
> Have you had any issues?
> A: No. I *have* *not* *tested* XYZ. I think XYZ is so unstable and 
> slow that it''s not worth testing.
>
> It is true that the userspace utilities for Btrfs are immature. But 
> nobody says Btrfs is ready for business deployments *right* *now*. I 
> merely said it could become a serious alternative to ZFS in one
year''s
> time.
>
> As far as stability is concerned, I haven''t had any issues so far.
> Neither with ZFS, nor with Btrfs.
>
> As far as performance is concerned, some people probably own a crystal 
> ball. This explains their ability to guess whether Btrfs will 
> outperform ZFS or not, once the first "stable" release of Btrfs
is
> out. Unfortunately, I''m not a prophet. ;-) So I''ll have
to make a
> decision based on benchmarks and thorough testing on some of my 
> machines, as soon as the first "stable" release of Btrfs is out.

On Aug 14, 2010, at 14:54, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
> From:  Russ Price
>
>> For me, Solaris had zero mindshare since its beginning, on account of
>> being prohibitively expensive.
>
> I hear that a lot, and I don''t get it.  $400/yr does move it out
of
> peoples''
> basements generally, and keeps sol10 out of enormous clustering  
> facilities
> that don''t have special purposes or free alternatives.  But I  
> wouldn''t call
> it prohibitively expensive, for a whole lot of purposes.
But that US$ 400 was only if you wanted support. For the last little  
while you could run Solaris 10 legally without a support contract  
without issues.

On Sat, 2010-08-14 at 17:35 +0200, Andrej Podzimek
wrote:
> > 3. Just stick with b134. Actually, I''ve managed to compile my
way up to b142, but I''m having trouble getting beyond it - my attempts
to install later versions just result in new boot environments with the old
kernel, even with the latest pkg-gate code in place. Still, even if I get the
latest code to install, it''s not viable for the long term unless
I''m willing to live with stasis.
> 
> I run build 146. There have been some heads-up messages on the topic. You
need b137 or later in order to build b143 or later. Plus the latest packaging
bits and other stuff.
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/on-discuss/2010-June/001932.html
> 
> When compiling b146, it''s good to read this first:
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/on-discuss/2010-August/002110.html Instead
of using the tagged onnv_146 code, you have to apply all the changesets up to
13011:dc5824d1233f.
>   
> > 6. Abandon ZFS completely and go back to LVM/MD-RAID. I ran it for
years before switching to ZFS, and it works - but it''s a bitter pill to
swallow after drinking the ZFS Kool-Aid.
> 
> Or Btrfs. It may not be ready for production now, but it could become a
serious alternative to ZFS in one year''s time or so. (I have been using
it for some time with absolutely no issues, but some people (Edward Shishkin)
say it has obvious bugs related to fragmentation.)
Do not forget Btrfs is mainly developed by ... Oracle. Will it survive
better than Free Solaris/ZFS?
> Andrej

On Sun, 15 Aug 2010, David Magda wrote:
>
> But that US$ 400 was only if you wanted support. For the last little while 
> you could run Solaris 10 legally without a support contract without issues.
The $400 number is bogus since the amount that Oracle quotes now 
depends on the value of the hardware that the OS will run on.  For my 
old SPARC Blade 2500 (which will probably not go beyond Solaris 10), 
the OS support cost was only in the $60-70 range.  On a brand-new 
high-end system, the cost is higher.  The OS support cost on a million 
dollar system would surely be quite high but owners of such systems 
will surely pay for system support rather than just OS support and 
care very much that their system continues running.

The previous Sun software support pricing model was completely bogus. 
The Oracle model is also bogus, but at least it provides a means for 
an entry-level user to be able to afford support.

Bob
-- 
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/

On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Bob Friesenhahn <
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us> wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Aug 2010, David Magda wrote:
>
>>
>> But that US$ 400 was only if you wanted support. For the last little
while
>> you could run Solaris 10 legally without a support contract without
issues.
>>
>
> The $400 number is bogus since the amount that Oracle quotes now depends on
> the value of the hardware that the OS will run on.  For my old SPARC Blade
> 2500 (which will probably not go beyond Solaris 10), the OS support cost
was
> only in the $60-70 range.  On a brand-new high-end system, the cost is
> higher.  The OS support cost on a million dollar system would surely be
> quite high but owners of such systems will surely pay for system support
> rather than just OS support and care very much that their system continues
> running.
>
> The previous Sun software support pricing model was completely bogus. The
> Oracle model is also bogus, but at least it provides a means for an
> entry-level user to be able to afford support.
>
> Bob
>
>
The cost discussion is ridiculous, period.  $400 is a steal for support.
 You''ll pay 3x or more for the same thing from Redhat or Novell.

--Tim
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For the ZFS diaspora:

1.) For the immediate and near term future (say 1 year), what makes a 
better choice for a new install of a ZFS-class filesystem? Would it be 
FreeBSD 8 with it''s older ZFS version (pool version 14), or NexentaCore
with newer ZFS (pool version 25(?) ), NexentaStor, or something else?  
OpenSolaris 2009.06, Solaris 10 10/09, FreeBSD 8-STABLE and 8.1-RELEASE 
all use pool version 14.  Linux ZFS-FUSE 0.6.9 is at pool version 23, 
and Linux zfs-0.5.0 is at pool vesion 26.

Are there any other ZFS or ZFS-class filesystems on a supported 
distribution that are worthy of consideration for this timeframe?


2.) IllumOS appears to be the likely heir to what was known as 
OpenSolaris.  They have their own mailing lists at 
http://lists.illumos.org/m/listinfo .  Interested community members 
might like to sign up there in case there is a sudden unavailability of 
opensolaris.org and its forums and lists.  Nexenta is sponsoring 
IllumOS.  Nexenta also appears somewhat insulated from the demise of 
OpenSolaris, and is a refuge for several former Sun engineers who were 
active on OpenSolaris.  Genunix.org and the Phoronix.com forums are 
other places to watch.


Other comments inline:


Russ Price wrote:
> My guess is that the theoretical Solaris Express 11 will be crippled 
> by any or all of: missing features, artificial limits on 
> functionality, or a restrictive license. I consider the latter most 
> likely, much like the OTN downloads of Oracle DB, where you can 
> download and run it for development purposes, but don''t even THINK
of
> using it as a production server for your home or small business. Of 
> course, an Oracle DB is overkill for such a purpose anyway, but
that''s
> a different kettle of fish.
>
> For me, Solaris had zero mindshare since its beginning, on account of 
> being prohibitively expensive. When OpenSolaris came out, I basically 
> ignored it once I found out that it was not completely open source, 
> since I figured that there was too great a risk of a train wreck like 
> we have now. Then, I decided this winter to give ZFS a spin, decided I 
> liked it, and built a home server around it - and within weeks Oracle 
> took over, tore up the tracks without telling anybody, and made the 
> train wreck I feared into a reality. I should have listened to my own 
> advice.
>
> As much as I''d like to be proven wrong, I don''t expect
SX11 to be
> useful for my purposes, so my home file server options are:
>
> 1. Nexenta Core. It''s maintained, and (somewhat) more up-to-date
than
> the late OpenSolaris. As I''ve been running Linux since the days
when a
> 486 was a cutting-edge system, I don''t mind having a GNU userland.
Of
> course, now that Oracle has slammed the door, it''ll be difficult
for
> it to move forward - which leads to:
1a. NexentaStor Community Edition may also be suitable for home file 
server class uses, depending on your actual storage needs.  It currently 
has a 12 TB limit, measured in actual used capacity.
http://support.nexenta.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=69&nav=0,15

> 2. IllumOS. In 20/20 hindsight, a project like this should have begun 
> as soon as OpenSolaris first came out the door, but better late than 
> never. In the short term, it''s not yet an option, but in the long 
> term, it may be the best (or only) hope. At the very least, I
won''t be
> able to use it until an open mpt driver is in place.
>
> 3. Just stick with b134. Actually, I''ve managed to compile my way
up
> to b142, but I''m having trouble getting beyond it - my attempts to
> install later versions just result in new boot environments with the 
> old kernel, even with the latest pkg-gate code in place. Still, even 
> if I get the latest code to install, it''s not viable for the long
term
> unless I''m willing to live with stasis.
>
> 4. FreeBSD. I could live with it if I had to, but I''m not fond of
its
> packaging system; the last time I tried it I couldn''t get the
package
> tools to pull a quick binary update. Even IPS works better. I could go 
> to the ports tree instead, but if I wanted to spend my time 
> recompiling everything, I''d run Gentoo instead.
>
> 5. Linux/FUSE. It works, but it''s slow.
> 5a. Compile-it-yourself ZFS kernel module for Linux. This would be a 
> hassle (though DKMS would make it less of an issue), but usable - 
> except that the current module only supports zvols, so it''s not
ready
> yet, unless I wanted to run ext3-on-zvol. Neither of these solutions 
> are practical for booting from ZFS.
>
> 6. Abandon ZFS completely and go back to LVM/MD-RAID. I ran it for 
> years before switching to ZFS, and it works - but it''s a bitter
pill
> to swallow after drinking the ZFS Kool-Aid. 
7.) Linux/BTRFS.  Still green, but moving quickly.  It will have crossed 
a minimum usability and stability threshold when Ubuntu or Fedora is 
willing to support it as default.  Might happen with Ubuntu 11.04, 
although in mid-May there was talk that 10.10 had a slight chance as 
well (but that seems unlikely now).

8.) EON NAS or other OpenSolaris based distros.  They don''t seem to
have
a bright future in store as they''re derivatives of OpenSolaris, unless 
they are able to transition to being based on IllumOS (which is 
conditional on how IllumOS progresses.)  On the other hand, it may not 
matter much if there aren''t more updates to them as long as they work 
well enough in their current form for NAS type applications.  I.e. 
they''re used until the next solution is available, like some are still 
using OpenSolaris 2009.06 instead of one of the development releases.



In another thread about a month ago Garrett D''Amore (from Nexenta and 
working with the IllumOS project which Nexenta is a sponsor of)
wrote:
> There is another piece I''ll add: even if Oracle were to stop
releasing
> ZFS or OpenSolaris source code, there are enough of us with a vested
> interest (commercial!) in its future that we would continue to develop
> it outside of Oracle.  It won''t just go stagnant and die.  I
believe I
> can safely say that Nexenta is committed to the continued development
> and enhancement of this code base -- and to doing so in the open.
>   
>From 
http://blogs.nexenta.org/blog/2010/08/13/opensolaris-no-more-and-nexenta/
>
> It appears that the rumors may be true and that Oracle may have 
> decided to move towards a more closed model for the development of 
> Solaris.  You can see a blog post with the leaked internal memo here:
>
> http://sstallion.blogspot.com/2010/08/opensolaris-is-dead.html
>
> If so, what does this mean for Nexenta?
>
> Well, *for NexentaStor customers and partners nothing will change*. 
>  We''ve been planning for this contingency for a long time. 
Clearly
> we''ll have to fork.  Thanks in part to the take off of Illumos
we''ll
> be able to continue to our core development in the open, and we''ll
> continue to contribute back all fixes such as the fairly recent ZFS 
> Monitor to the community.
>
> The leaked memo does state that Oracle will open source the CDDL 
> components --- however they''ll only do so when they release their 
> Solaris commercial releases and not before.
>
> We are already seeing hundreds of new customers that are experienced 
> with OpenSolaris for storage -- and we welcome these customers with 
> open arms.  NexentaStor can address your storage needs better than 
> OpenSolaris ever could, and we look forward to proving this to you 
> every day.
>
> We also hereby make more explicit our support for Illumos.  In 
> addition to being a key contributor of engineering resources we are 
> happy to announce that we are going to contribute 1% of the equity of 
> Nexenta Systems to the forthcoming Illumos foundation.  I''m
confident
> that this 1% will be worth millions to the Illumos foundation.   We 
> would suggest that other companies consider a similar approach.   We 
> were planning to announce this when the Illumos foundation was 
> announced but given today''s rumors, I think it is worth announcing
today.
>
> We''d like to see more support offered to OpenSolaris / Illumos
users,
> however we''re not sure that we are the right company to offer that
> support; we remain focused on our mission of /"enterprise class 
> storage for everyone"/.   If you are a support provider interested in 
> speaking with us about how we might work together, please feel free to 
> comment below or to reach out either directly or via the Illumos 
> community.  We''re happy to help third party support providers
emerge
> to address the demands of the Illumos / OpenSolaris community.
>
> Last but certainly not least, we continue to feel that we''re on
the
> same side as Oracle in the overall battle for openness and choice in 
> enterprise storage.  Without their early work on ZFS there is no way 
> that we could have achieved the "take off" we''re
experiencing.   And,
> by both existing in the market we give customers the freedom from 
> vendor lock-in they clearly demand; you can migrate from NexentaStor 
> to an Oracle ZFS based solution and back in hours, as opposed to the 
> months or quarters it takes to move off a legacy array.  We continue 
> to value that joint value proposition in the market and certainly 
> respect the world-class engineering of ZFS and related software.
>
Also see http://blogs.nexenta.org/blog/2010/08/14/the-hand-may-be-forced/





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> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Jerome Warnier
> 
> Do not forget Btrfs is mainly developed by ... Oracle. Will it survive
> better than Free Solaris/ZFS?
It''s gpl.  Just as zfs is cddl.  They cannot undo, or revoke the free
license they''ve granted to use and develop upon whatever
they''ve released.

ZFS is not dead, although it is yet to be seen if future development will be
closed source.

BTRFS is not dead, and cannot be any more dead than zfs.

So honestly ... your comment above ... really has no bearing in reality.

> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Bob Friesenhahn
> 
> The $400 number is bogus since the amount that Oracle quotes now
> depends on the value of the hardware that the OS will run on.  For my
Using the same logic, if I said MS Office costs $140, that''s a bogus
number,
because different vendors sell it at different prices.

It''s $450 for 1yr, or $1200 for 3yrs to buy solaris 10 with basic
support on
a dell server.  It costs more with a higher level of support, and it costs
less if you have a good relationship with Dell with a strong corporate
discount, or if you buy it at the end of Dell''s quarter, when they have
the
best sales going on.

I don''t know how much it costs at other vendors.

> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Tim Cook
>
> The cost discussion is ridiculous, period. ?$400 is a steal for
> support. ?You''ll pay 3x or more for the same thing from Redhat or
> Novell.
Actually, as a comparison with the message I sent 1 minute ago... in order
to compare apples to apples ...

> [Solaris is] $450 for 1yr, or $1200 for 3yrs to buy solaris 10 with basic
> support on
> a dell server.  It costs more with a higher level of support, and it
> costs
> less if you have a good relationship with Dell with a strong corporate
> discount, or if you buy it at the end of Dell''s quarter, when they
have
> the
> best sales going on.
If you buy RHEL ES support with the same dell servers, the cost would be
$350/yr for basic support.  Plus or minus, based on AS and level of support
and your relationship with Dell.

Solaris costs more, but the ballpark is certainly the same.

I''d recommend typical end-users not interested in purchasing equipment
from Oracle consider Nexenta''s product line for storage serving.

I can tell you that we offer real support, and we have the latest code
base with the most tightly integrated kernel other than Oracle''s
product.  (And in many cases, we bring features into a shipping product
sooner than Oracle does.)

I''ve not tried the FreeBSD ZFS implementation, but I''ve heard
that it
suffers from a performance standpoint -- its also a bit behind the
Solaris derived platforms.  The Linux effort is far too immature to
trust any real data to it, and may wind up never getting any real legs
underneath it due to license related conflicts.

	- Garrett


On Sun, 2010-08-15 at 18:31 -0500, Haudy Kazemi wrote:
> For the ZFS diaspora:
> 
> 1.) For the immediate and near term future (say 1 year), what makes a
> better choice for a new install of a ZFS-class filesystem? Would it be
> FreeBSD 8 with it''s older ZFS version (pool version 14), or
> NexentaCore with newer ZFS (pool version 25(?) ), NexentaStor, or
> something else?  OpenSolaris 2009.06, Solaris 10 10/09, FreeBSD
> 8-STABLE and 8.1-RELEASE all use pool version 14.  Linux ZFS-FUSE
> 0.6.9 is at pool version 23, and Linux zfs-0.5.0 is at pool vesion 26.
> 
> Are there any other ZFS or ZFS-class filesystems on a supported
> distribution that are worthy of consideration for this timeframe?
> 
> 
> 2.) IllumOS appears to be the likely heir to what was known as
> OpenSolaris.  They have their own mailing lists at
> http://lists.illumos.org/m/listinfo .  Interested community members
> might like to sign up there in case there is a sudden unavailability
> of opensolaris.org and its forums and lists.  Nexenta is sponsoring
> IllumOS.  Nexenta also appears somewhat insulated from the demise of
> OpenSolaris, and is a refuge for several former Sun engineers who were
> active on OpenSolaris.  Genunix.org and the Phoronix.com forums are
> other places to watch.
> 
> 
> Other comments inline:
> 
> 
> Russ Price wrote: 
> > My guess is that the theoretical Solaris Express 11 will be crippled
> > by any or all of: missing features, artificial limits on
> > functionality, or a restrictive license. I consider the latter most
> > likely, much like the OTN downloads of Oracle DB, where you can
> > download and run it for development purposes, but don''t even
THINK
> > of using it as a production server for your home or small business.
> > Of course, an Oracle DB is overkill for such a purpose anyway, but
> > that''s a different kettle of fish. 
> > 
> > For me, Solaris had zero mindshare since its beginning, on account
> > of being prohibitively expensive. When OpenSolaris came out, I
> > basically ignored it once I found out that it was not completely
> > open source, since I figured that there was too great a risk of a
> > train wreck like we have now. Then, I decided this winter to give
> > ZFS a spin, decided I liked it, and built a home server around it -
> > and within weeks Oracle took over, tore up the tracks without
> > telling anybody, and made the train wreck I feared into a reality. I
> > should have listened to my own advice. 
> > 
> > As much as I''d like to be proven wrong, I don''t
expect SX11 to be
> > useful for my purposes, so my home file server options are: 
> > 
> > 1. Nexenta Core. It''s maintained, and (somewhat) more
up-to-date
> > than the late OpenSolaris. As I''ve been running Linux since
the days
> > when a 486 was a cutting-edge system, I don''t mind having a
GNU
> > userland. Of course, now that Oracle has slammed the door,
it''ll be
> > difficult for it to move forward - which leads to: 
> 1a. NexentaStor Community Edition may also be suitable for home file
> server class uses, depending on your actual storage needs.  It
> currently has a 12 TB limit, measured in actual used capacity.
>
http://support.nexenta.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=69&nav=0,15
> 
> 
> > 2. IllumOS. In 20/20 hindsight, a project like this should have
> > begun as soon as OpenSolaris first came out the door, but better
> > late than never. In the short term, it''s not yet an option,
but in
> > the long term, it may be the best (or only) hope. At the very least,
> > I won''t be able to use it until an open mpt driver is in
place.
> > 
> > 3. Just stick with b134. Actually, I''ve managed to compile my
way up
> > to b142, but I''m having trouble getting beyond it - my
attempts to
> > install later versions just result in new boot environments with the
> > old kernel, even with the latest pkg-gate code in place. Still, even
> > if I get the latest code to install, it''s not viable for the
long
> > term unless I''m willing to live with stasis. 
> > 
> > 4. FreeBSD. I could live with it if I had to, but I''m not
fond of
> > its packaging system; the last time I tried it I couldn''t get
the
> > package tools to pull a quick binary update. Even IPS works better.
> > I could go to the ports tree instead, but if I wanted to spend my
> > time recompiling everything, I''d run Gentoo instead. 
> > 
> > 5. Linux/FUSE. It works, but it''s slow. 
> > 5a. Compile-it-yourself ZFS kernel module for Linux. This would be a
> > hassle (though DKMS would make it less of an issue), but usable -
> > except that the current module only supports zvols, so it''s
not
> > ready yet, unless I wanted to run ext3-on-zvol. Neither of these
> > solutions are practical for booting from ZFS. 
> > 
> > 6. Abandon ZFS completely and go back to LVM/MD-RAID. I ran it for
> > years before switching to ZFS, and it works - but it''s a
bitter pill
> > to swallow after drinking the ZFS Kool-Aid.
> 
> 7.) Linux/BTRFS.  Still green, but moving quickly.  It will have
> crossed a minimum usability and stability threshold when Ubuntu or
> Fedora is willing to support it as default.  Might happen with Ubuntu
> 11.04, although in mid-May there was talk that 10.10 had a slight
> chance as well (but that seems unlikely now).
> 
> 8.) EON NAS or other OpenSolaris based distros.  They don''t seem
to
> have a bright future in store as they''re derivatives of
OpenSolaris,
> unless they are able to transition to being based on IllumOS (which is
> conditional on how IllumOS progresses.)  On the other hand, it may not
> matter much if there aren''t more updates to them as long as they
work
> well enough in their current form for NAS type applications.  I.e.
> they''re used until the next solution is available, like some are
still
> using OpenSolaris 2009.06 instead of one of the development releases.
> 
> 
> 
> In another thread about a month ago Garrett D''Amore (from Nexenta
and
> working with the IllumOS project which Nexenta is a sponsor of)
> wrote: 
> > There is another piece I''ll add: even if Oracle were to stop
> > releasing
> > ZFS or OpenSolaris source code, there are enough of us with a vested
> > interest (commercial!) in its future that we would continue to develop
> > it outside of Oracle.  It won''t just go stagnant and die.  I
believe I
> > can safely say that Nexenta is committed to the continued development
> > and enhancement of this code base -- and to doing so in the open.
> >   
> 
> 
> From
> http://blogs.nexenta.org/blog/2010/08/13/opensolaris-no-more-and-nexenta/
> > It appears that the rumors may be true and that Oracle may have
> > decided to move towards a more closed model for the development of
> > Solaris.  You can see a blog post with the leaked internal memo
> > here:
> > 
> > http://sstallion.blogspot.com/2010/08/opensolaris-is-dead.html
> > 
> > If so, what does this mean for Nexenta?
> > 
> > Well, for NexentaStor customers and partners nothing will change.
> >  We?ve been planning for this contingency for a long time.  Clearly
> > we?ll have to fork.  Thanks in part to the take off of Illumos we?ll
> > be able to continue to our core development in the open, and we?ll
> > continue to contribute back all fixes such as the fairly recent ZFS
> > Monitor to the community.
> > 
> > The leaked memo does state that Oracle will open source the CDDL
> > components ? however they?ll only do so when they release their
> > Solaris commercial releases and not before.
> > 
> > We are already seeing hundreds of new customers that are experienced
> > with OpenSolaris for storage ? and we welcome these customers with
> > open arms.  NexentaStor can address your storage needs better than
> > OpenSolaris ever could, and we look forward to proving this to you
> > every day.
> > 
> > We also hereby make more explicit our support for Illumos.  In
> > addition to being a key contributor of engineering resources we are
> > happy to announce that we are going to contribute 1% of the equity
> > of Nexenta Systems to the forthcoming Illumos foundation.  I?m
> > confident that this 1% will be worth millions to the Illumos
> > foundation.   We would suggest that other companies consider a
> > similar approach.   We were planning to announce this when the
> > Illumos foundation was announced but given today?s rumors, I think
> > it is worth announcing today.
> > 
> > We?d like to see more support offered to OpenSolaris / Illumos
> > users, however we?re not sure that we are the right company to offer
> > that support; we remain focused on our mission of ?enterprise class
> > storage for everyone?.   If you are a support provider interested in
> > speaking with us about how we might work together, please feel free
> > to comment below or to reach out either directly or via the Illumos
> > community.  We?re happy to help third party support providers emerge
> > to address the demands of the Illumos / OpenSolaris community.
> > 
> > Last but certainly not least, we continue to feel that we?re on the
> > same side as Oracle in the overall battle for openness and choice in
> > enterprise storage.  Without their early work on ZFS there is no way
> > that we could have achieved the ?take off? we?re experiencing.
> > And, by both existing in the market we give customers the freedom
> > from vendor lock-in they clearly demand; you can migrate from
> > NexentaStor to an Oracle ZFS based solution and back in hours, as
> > opposed to the months or quarters it takes to move off a legacy
> > array.  We continue to value that joint value proposition in the
> > market and certainly respect the world-class engineering of ZFS and
> > related software.
> > 
> 
> Also see
> http://blogs.nexenta.org/blog/2010/08/14/the-hand-may-be-forced/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss

Any code can become abandonware; where it effectively bitrots into
oblivion.

For either ZFS or BTRFS (or any other filesystem) to survive, there have
to be sufficiently skilled developers with an interest in developing and
maintaining it (whether the interest is commercial or recreational).

Honestly, I think both ZFS and btrfs will continue to be invested in by
Oracle.

(The only way I could see this changing would be if there was a sudden
license change which would permit either ZFS to overtake btrfs in the
Linux kernel, or permit btrfs to overtake zfs in the Solaris kernel.  I
think from a technical perspective, the latter of those two is
exceedingly unlikely -- if I understand correctly btrfs has a lot of
ground to make up to catch zfs, and zfs continues to receive
improvements and innovation.  The only way I could see zfs being
abandoned would be if there were some legal reason why Oracle couldn''t
continue to develop it.  I don''t think that is in the cards, honestly.)

	- Garrett

On Sun, 2010-08-15 at 19:33 -0400, Edward Ned Harvey
wrote:
> > From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> > bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Jerome Warnier
> > 
> > Do not forget Btrfs is mainly developed by ... Oracle. Will it survive
> > better than Free Solaris/ZFS?
> 
> It''s gpl.  Just as zfs is cddl.  They cannot undo, or revoke the
free
> license they''ve granted to use and develop upon whatever
they''ve released.
> 
> ZFS is not dead, although it is yet to be seen if future development will
be
> closed source.
> 
> BTRFS is not dead, and cannot be any more dead than zfs.
> 
> So honestly ... your comment above ... really has no bearing in reality.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
>

On 2010-Aug-16 08:17:10 +0800, Garrett D''Amore <garrett at
nexenta.com> wrote:
>For either ZFS or BTRFS (or any other filesystem) to survive, there have
>to be sufficiently skilled developers with an interest in developing and
>maintaining it (whether the interest is commercial or recreational).
Agreed.  And this applies to OpenSolaris (or Illumos or any other fork)
as well.
>Honestly, I think both ZFS and btrfs will continue to be invested in by
>Oracle.
Given that both provide similar features, it''s difficult to see why
Oracle would continue to invest in both.  Given that ZFS is the more
mature product, it would seem more logical to transfer all the effort
to ZFS and leave btrfs to die.

Irrespective of the above, there is nothing requiring Oracle to release
any future btrfs or ZFS improvements (or even bugfixes).  They can''t
retrospectively change the license on already released code but they
can put a different (non-OSS) license on any new code.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
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"Garrett D''Amore" <garrett at nexenta.com> wrote:
> (The only way I could see this changing would be if there was a sudden
> license change which would permit either ZFS to overtake btrfs in the
> Linux kernel, or permit btrfs to overtake zfs in the Solaris kernel.  I
There is only a need for a mind change at the Linux side. There is no need for 
a license change. The only way to integrate BSD code into the Linux kernel is 
creating a "collective work". The same method works for CDDL code.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

> From: Garrett D''Amore [mailto:garrett at nexenta.com]
> Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2010 8:17 PM
> 
> (The only way I could see this changing would be if there was a sudden
> license change which would permit either ZFS to overtake btrfs in the
> Linux kernel, or permit btrfs to overtake zfs in the Solaris kernel.  I
Of course this has been discussed extensively, but I believe, the reasons for
ZFS not to be in Linux kernel go beyond just the license incompatibility.

ZFS does raid, and mirroring, and resilvering, and partitioning, and NFS, and
CIFS, and iSCSI, and device management via vdev''s, and so on.  So ZFS
steps on a lot of linux peoples'' toes.  They already have code to do
this, or that, why should they kill off all these other projects, and turn the
world upside down, and bow down and acknowledge that anyone else did anything
better than what they did?

No, they just want a copy-on-write filesystem, and nothing more.  Something
which more closely complies to the architecture model that they''re
already using.

Something which doesn''t hurt their ego when they accept it...  And of
course by "they" I''m mostly referring to Linus.  And all the
people who work on kernel, ext fs, software raid, and all these other things
which already exist in a "More Linuxy" way...

On Sun, August 15, 2010 21:44, Peter Jeremy wrote:
> Given that both provide similar features, it''s difficult to see
why
> Oracle would continue to invest in both.  Given that ZFS is the more
> mature product, it would seem more logical to transfer all the effort
> to ZFS and leave btrfs to die.
Or have someone else (RH, IBM, Google) fund it. Other Linux users and
vendors would probably prefer to have a file system which has a broader
developer community: currently ZFS tends to be highly concentrated at
Oracle. OEL may default to ZFS, but given the dozens and dozens of file
systems available with Linux, I''m sure other distributions may select
other ones.

On Aug 16, 2010, at 9:06 AM, "Edward Ned Harvey" <shill at
nedharvey.com> wrote:
> ZFS does raid, and mirroring, and resilvering, and partitioning, and NFS,
and CIFS, and iSCSI, and device management via vdev''s, and so on.  So
ZFS steps on a lot of linux peoples'' toes.  They already have code to
do this, or that, why should they kill off all these other projects, and turn
the world upside down, and bow down and acknowledge that anyone else did
anything better than what they did?
Actually ZFS doesn''t do NFS/CIFS/iSCSI those shareX options merely
execute scripts to perform the OS operations as appropriate.

BTRFS also handles the "RAID" of the hard disks as ZFS does.

No, the only real issue is the license and I highly doubt Oracle will re-release
ZFS under GPL to dilute it''s competitive advantage.

I think the market NEEDs file system competition in order to drive innovation so
it would be beneficial for both FSs to continue together into the future.

-Ross

On Mon, August 16, 2010 09:06, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
> ZFS does raid, and mirroring, and resilvering, and partitioning, and NFS,
> and CIFS, and iSCSI, and device management via vdev''s, and so on. 
So ZFS
> steps on a lot of linux peoples'' toes.  They already have code to
do this,
> or that, why should they kill off all these other projects, and turn the
> world upside down, and bow down and acknowledge that anyone else did
> anything better than what they did?
Well, to be fair, given the multitude of file systems available in the
Linux kernel, those sub-systems would still be needed. Even with Solaris,
though NFS and CIFS functionality is linked with ZFS, you still have to
deal with UFS and tmpfs, and have NFS work with those.
> No, they just want a copy-on-write filesystem, and nothing more.
> Something which more closely complies to the architecture model that
> they''re already using.
Btrfs does more than just COW. They also have RAID-like functionality:

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Using_Btrfs_with_Multiple_Devices

At the end of the day, they''ll be rough feature-parity between the two,
even though the implementations will be different:

http://lwn.net/Articles/342892/

On Aug 15, 2010, at 9:44 PM, Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy at
alcatel-lucent.com> wrote:
> Given that both provide similar features, it''s difficult to see
why
> Oracle would continue to invest in both.  Given that ZFS is the more
> mature product, it would seem more logical to transfer all the effort
> to ZFS and leave btrfs to die.
I can see Oracle ejecting BTRFS from it''s folds, but seriously doubt it
will die. BTRFS is now mainlined into the Linux kernel and I will bet that
currently a lot of it''s development is already coming from outside
parties and Oracle is simply acting as the commit maintainer.

Linux is an evolving OS, what determines a FS''s continued existence is
the public''s adoption rate of that FS. If nobody ends up using it then
the kernel will drop it in which case it will eventually die.

-Ross

On Sun, August 15, 2010 20:44, Peter Jeremy wrote:
> Irrespective of the above, there is nothing requiring Oracle to release
> any future btrfs or ZFS improvements (or even bugfixes).  They
can''t
> retrospectively change the license on already released code but they
> can put a different (non-OSS) license on any new code.
That''s true.

However, if Oracle makes a binary release of BTRFS-derived code, they must
release the source as well; BTRFS is under the GPL.

So, if they''re going to use it in any way as a product, they have to
release the source.  If they want to use it just internally they can do
anything they want, of course.

-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 01:54:13PM -0700, Erast wrote:
> 
> On 08/13/2010 01:39 PM, Tim Cook wrote:
> >http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/opensolaris_is_dead/
> >
> >I''m a bit surprised at this development... Oracle really just
doesn''t
> >get it.  The part that''s most disturbing to me is the fact
they won''t be
> >releasing nightly snapshots.  It appears they''ve stopped
Illumos in its
> >tracks before it really even got started (perhaps that explains the
> >timing of this press release)
> 
> Wrong. Be patient, with the pace of current Illumos development it soon 
> will have all the closed binaries liberated and ready to sync up with 
> promised ON code drops as dictated by GPL and CDDL licenses.
Is this what you mean, from:

http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/opensolaris_license

    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. You must include a copy of this License with every copy of
    the Source Code form of the Covered Software You distribute or
    otherwise make available. You must inform recipients of any such
    Covered Software in Executable form as to how they can obtain such
    Covered Software in Source Code form in a reasonable manner on or
    through a medium customarily used for software exchange.

-- 
-Gary Mills-        -Unix Group-        -Computer and Network Services-

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 10:21 AM, David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b at dd-b.net>
wrote:
>
> On Sun, August 15, 2010 20:44, Peter Jeremy wrote:
>
> > Irrespective of the above, there is nothing requiring Oracle to
release
> > any future btrfs or ZFS improvements (or even bugfixes).  They
can''t
> > retrospectively change the license on already released code but they
> > can put a different (non-OSS) license on any new code.
>
> That''s true.
>
> However, if Oracle makes a binary release of BTRFS-derived code, they must
> release the source as well; BTRFS is under the GPL.
>
BTRFS can be under any license they want, they own the code.  There''s
absolutely nothing preventing them from dual-licensing it.

>
> So, if they''re going to use it in any way as a product, they have
to
> release the source.  If they want to use it just internally they can do
> anything they want, of course.
>
>
No, no they don''t.  You''re under the misconception that they
no longer own
the code just because they released a copy as GPL.  That is not true.
 Anyone ELSE who uses the GPL code must release modifications if they wish
to distribute it due to the GPL.  The original author is free to license the
code as many times under as many conditions as they like, and release or not
release subsequent changes they make to their own code.

I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has dual-licensed
BTRFS.

--Tim
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On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 08:35:05AM -0700, Tim Cook
wrote:
> No, no they don''t.  You''re under the misconception that
they no
> longer own the code just because they released a copy as GPL.  That
> is not true.  Anyone ELSE who uses the GPL code must release
> modifications if they wish to distribute it due to the GPL.  The
> original author is free to license the code as many times under as
> many conditions as they like, and release or not release subsequent
> changes they make to their own code.
> 
> I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has
> dual-licensed BTRFS.
Well, Oracle obviously would want btrfs to stay as part of the Linux
kernel rather than die a death of anonymity outside of it... 

As such, they''ll need to continue to comply with GPLv2 requirements.

Ray

"David Dyer-Bennet" <dd-b at dd-b.net> wrote:
>
> On Sun, August 15, 2010 20:44, Peter Jeremy wrote:
>
> > Irrespective of the above, there is nothing requiring Oracle to
release
> > any future btrfs or ZFS improvements (or even bugfixes).  They
can''t
> > retrospectively change the license on already released code but they
> > can put a different (non-OSS) license on any new code.
>
> That''s true.
>
> However, if Oracle makes a binary release of BTRFS-derived code, they must
> release the source as well; BTRFS is under the GPL.
This claim would only be true in case that Oracle does not own the copyright
on its'' code...

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

Tim Cook wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 10:21 AM, David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b at dd-b.net 
> <mailto:dd-b at dd-b.net>> wrote:
>
>
>     On Sun, August 15, 2010 20:44, Peter Jeremy wrote:
>
>     > Irrespective of the above, there is nothing requiring Oracle to
>     release
>     > any future btrfs or ZFS improvements (or even bugfixes).  They
can''t
>     > retrospectively change the license on already released code but
they
>     > can put a different (non-OSS) license on any new code.
>
>     That''s true.
>
>     However, if Oracle makes a binary release of BTRFS-derived code,
>     they must
>     release the source as well; BTRFS is under the GPL.
>
>
> BTRFS can be under any license they want, they own the code. 
There''s
> absolutely nothing preventing them from dual-licensing it.
>  
>
>
>     So, if they''re going to use it in any way as a product, they
have to
>     release the source.  If they want to use it just internally they
>     can do
>     anything they want, of course.
>
>
> No, no they don''t.  You''re under the misconception that
they no longer
> own the code just because they released a copy as GPL.  That is not 
> true.  Anyone ELSE who uses the GPL code must release modifications if 
> they wish to distribute it due to the GPL.  The original author is 
> free to license the code as many times under as many conditions as 
> they like, and release or not release subsequent changes they make to 
> their own code.
>
> I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has dual-licensed 
> BTRFS.
No.. talk to Chris Mason.. it depends on the linux kernel too much 
already to be available under anything, but GPLv2

Ray Van Dolson <rvandolson at esri.com> wrote:
> > I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has
> > dual-licensed BTRFS.
>
> Well, Oracle obviously would want btrfs to stay as part of the Linux
> kernel rather than die a death of anonymity outside of it... 
>
> As such, they''ll need to continue to comply with GPLv2
requirements.
No, there is definitely no need for Oracle to comply with the GPL as they
own the code.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 08:48:31AM -0700, Joerg Schilling
wrote:
> Ray Van Dolson <rvandolson at esri.com> wrote:
> 
> > > I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has
> > > dual-licensed BTRFS.
> >
> > Well, Oracle obviously would want btrfs to stay as part of the Linux
> > kernel rather than die a death of anonymity outside of it... 
> >
> > As such, they''ll need to continue to comply with GPLv2
requirements.
> 
> No, there is definitely no need for Oracle to comply with the GPL as they
> own the code.
> 
Maybe there''s not legally, but practically there is.  If
they''re not
GPL compliant, why would Linus or his lieutenants continue to allow the
code to remain part of the Linux kernel?

And what purpose would btrfs serve Oracle outside of the Linux kernel?

Ray

On Mon, August 16, 2010 10:48, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Ray Van Dolson <rvandolson at esri.com> wrote:
>
>> > I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has
>> > dual-licensed BTRFS.
>>
>> Well, Oracle obviously would want btrfs to stay as part of the Linux
>> kernel rather than die a death of anonymity outside of it...
>>
>> As such, they''ll need to continue to comply with GPLv2
requirements.
>
> No, there is definitely no need for Oracle to comply with the GPL as they
> own the code.
Ray''s point is, how long would BTRFS remain in the Linux kernel in that
case?
-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 10:40 AM, Ray Van Dolson <rvandolson at
esri.com>wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 08:35:05AM -0700, Tim Cook wrote:
> > No, no they don''t.  You''re under the misconception
that they no
> > longer own the code just because they released a copy as GPL.  That
> > is not true.  Anyone ELSE who uses the GPL code must release
> > modifications if they wish to distribute it due to the GPL.  The
> > original author is free to license the code as many times under as
> > many conditions as they like, and release or not release subsequent
> > changes they make to their own code.
> >
> > I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has
> > dual-licensed BTRFS.
>
> Well, Oracle obviously would want btrfs to stay as part of the Linux
> kernel rather than die a death of anonymity outside of it...
>
> As such, they''ll need to continue to comply with GPLv2
requirements.
>
>
Why would they obviously want that?  When the project started, they were
competing with Sun.  They now own Solaris; they no longer have a need to
produce a competing product.  I would be EXTREMELY surprised to see Oracle
continue to push Linux as hard as they have in the past, over the next 5
years.

--Tim
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On Mon, August 16, 2010 10:43, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> "David Dyer-Bennet" <dd-b at dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Sun, August 15, 2010 20:44, Peter Jeremy wrote:
>>
>> > Irrespective of the above, there is nothing requiring Oracle to
>> release
>> > any future btrfs or ZFS improvements (or even bugfixes).  They
can''t
>> > retrospectively change the license on already released code but
they
>> > can put a different (non-OSS) license on any new code.
>>
>> That''s true.
>>
>> However, if Oracle makes a binary release of BTRFS-derived code, they
>> must
>> release the source as well; BTRFS is under the GPL.
>
> This claim would only be true in case that Oracle does not own the
> copyright
> on its'' code...
Oops, yeah, you''re right there; the copyright holder can grant
additional
licenses and do things itself.
-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info

"C. Bergstr?m" <codestr0m at osunix.org> wrote:
> > I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has dual-licensed
> > BTRFS.
> No.. talk to Chris Mason.. it depends on the linux kernel too much 
> already to be available under anything, but GPLv2
If he really believes this, then he seems to be missinformed about legal 
background. 

The question is: who wrote the btrfs code and who owns it.

If Oracle pays him for writing the code, then Oracle owns the code and can 
relicense it under any license they like.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

On Mon, 2010-08-16 at 08:52 -0700, Ray Van Dolson wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 08:48:31AM -0700, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > Ray Van Dolson <rvandolson at esri.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > > I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has
> > > > dual-licensed BTRFS.
> > >
> > > Well, Oracle obviously would want btrfs to stay as part of the
Linux
> > > kernel rather than die a death of anonymity outside of it... 
> > >
> > > As such, they''ll need to continue to comply with GPLv2
requirements.
> > 
> > No, there is definitely no need for Oracle to comply with the GPL as
they
> > own the code.
> > 
> 
> Maybe there''s not legally, but practically there is.  If
they''re not
> GPL compliant, why would Linus or his lieutenants continue to allow the
> code to remain part of the Linux kernel?
> 
> And what purpose would btrfs serve Oracle outside of the Linux kernel?
If they wanted to port it to Solaris under a difference license, they
could.  This may actually be a backup plan in case the NetApp suit goes
badly.  But this is pure conjecture.

	- Garrett
> 
> Ray
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
>

Joerg Schilling wrote:
> "C. Bergstr?m" <codestr0m at osunix.org> wrote:
>
>   
>>> I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has
dual-licensed
>>> BTRFS.
>>>       
>> No.. talk to Chris Mason.. it depends on the linux kernel too much 
>> already to be available under anything, but GPLv2
>>     
>
> If he really believes this, then he seems to be missinformed about legal 
> background. 
>
> The question is: who wrote the btrfs code and who owns it.
>
> If Oracle pays him for writing the code, then Oracle owns the code and can 
> relicense it under any license they like.
>   
Why don''t all you license trolls go crawl under a rock.. Are you so 
dense to believe

1) Only Oracle devs have by now contributed to btrfs?
2) That it''s so tightly intermingled with the linux kernel code you 
can''t separate the two of them.

Just STFU already and go check commit logs and source if you don''t
believe..

ZFS-discuss != BTRFS+Oracle-license troll-ml

"David Dyer-Bennet" <dd-b at dd-b.net> wrote:
> >> As such, they''ll need to continue to comply with GPLv2
requirements.
> >
> > No, there is definitely no need for Oracle to comply with the GPL as
they
> > own the code.
>
> Ray''s point is, how long would BTRFS remain in the Linux kernel in
that case?
Such a license change can happen at any time. The Linux folks have no grant 
that it would not happen. 

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 08:55:49AM -0700, Tim Cook
wrote:
> Why would they obviously want that?  When the project started, they
> were competing with Sun.  They now own Solaris; they no longer have a
> need to produce a competing product.  I would be EXTREMELY surprised
> to see Oracle continue to push Linux as hard as they have in the
> past, over the next 5 years.
> 
> --Tim
Well, we''re getting into the realm of opinion here.. but if
I''m a
decision maker at Oracle, I''m not abandoning Linux, nor my potential
influence in the future "de facto" Linux filesystem.

Oracle can gear Solaris towards big iron / Enterprisey, niche
solutions, but I''d bet a lot that they''re not abandoning the
Linux
space by a longshot just because they own Solaris...

But your opinion is as valid as mine on this topic... :)

Ray

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 08:58:20AM -0700, Garrett D''Amore
wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-08-16 at 08:52 -0700, Ray Van Dolson wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 08:48:31AM -0700, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > > Ray Van Dolson <rvandolson at esri.com> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > > I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already
has
> > > > > dual-licensed BTRFS.
> > > >
> > > > Well, Oracle obviously would want btrfs to stay as part of
the Linux
> > > > kernel rather than die a death of anonymity outside of it...
> > > >
> > > > As such, they''ll need to continue to comply with
GPLv2 requirements.
> > > 
> > > No, there is definitely no need for Oracle to comply with the GPL
as they
> > > own the code.
> > > 
> > 
> > Maybe there''s not legally, but practically there is.  If
they''re not
> > GPL compliant, why would Linus or his lieutenants continue to allow
the
> > code to remain part of the Linux kernel?
> > 
> > And what purpose would btrfs serve Oracle outside of the Linux kernel?
> 
> If they wanted to port it to Solaris under a difference license, they
> could.  This may actually be a backup plan in case the NetApp suit goes
> badly.  But this is pure conjecture.
btrfs is often described as the "next" default Linux filesystem (by
Ted
T''So and others).  It seems odd to me that Oracle wouldn''t
have an
interest in retaining a controlling interest (as in retaining the
primary engineers) in its development.... and ensuring it stays in the
Linux kernel and meets these expectations...

Seems like an excellent long-term strategy to me anyways!

Anyways, getting a bit off topic here I suppose, though it''s an
interesting discussion. :)
> 
> 	- Garrett
> 
> > 
> > Ray
Ray

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 08:57:19AM -0700, Joerg Schilling
wrote:
> "C. Bergstr?m" <codestr0m at osunix.org> wrote:
> 
> > > I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has
dual-licensed
> > > BTRFS.
> > No.. talk to Chris Mason.. it depends on the linux kernel too much 
> > already to be available under anything, but GPLv2
> 
> If he really believes this, then he seems to be missinformed about legal 
> background. 
> 
> The question is: who wrote the btrfs code and who owns it.
> 
> If Oracle pays him for writing the code, then Oracle owns the code and can 
> relicense it under any license they like.
> 
> J?rg
I don''t think anyone is arguing that Oracle can relicense their own
copyrighted code as they see fit.

The real question is, WHY would they do it?  What would be the business
motivation here?  Chris Mason would most likely leave Oracle, Red Hat
would hire him and fork the last GPL''d version of btrfs and Oracle
would have relegated itself to a non-player in the Linux filesystem
space... 

So, yes, they can do it if they want, I just think they''re not THAT
stupid. :)

Ray

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 09:08:52AM -0700, Ray Van Dolson
wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 08:57:19AM -0700, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > "C. Bergstr?m" <codestr0m at osunix.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > > I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has
dual-licensed
> > > > BTRFS.
> > > No.. talk to Chris Mason.. it depends on the linux kernel too
much
> > > already to be available under anything, but GPLv2
> > 
> > If he really believes this, then he seems to be missinformed about
legal
> > background. 
> > 
> > The question is: who wrote the btrfs code and who owns it.
> > 
> > If Oracle pays him for writing the code, then Oracle owns the code and
can
> > relicense it under any license they like.
> > 
> > J?rg
> 
> I don''t think anyone is arguing that Oracle can relicense their
own
> copyrighted code as they see fit.
s/can/can''t/

2010/8/16 "C. Bergstr?m" <codestr0m at osunix.org>
> Joerg Schilling wrote:
>
>> "C. Bergstr?m" <codestr0m at osunix.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has
dual-licensed
>>>> BTRFS.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> No.. talk to Chris Mason.. it depends on the linux kernel too much
>>> already to be available under anything, but GPLv2
>>>
>>>
>>
>> If he really believes this, then he seems to be missinformed about
legal
>> background.
>> The question is: who wrote the btrfs code and who owns it.
>>
>> If Oracle pays him for writing the code, then Oracle owns the code and
can
>> relicense it under any license they like.
>>
>>
> Why don''t all you license trolls go crawl under a rock.. Are you
so dense
> to believe
>
> 1) Only Oracle devs have by now contributed to btrfs?
> 2) That it''s so tightly intermingled with the linux kernel code
you can''t
> separate the two of them.
>
> Just STFU already and go check commit logs and source if you don''t
> believe..
>
> ZFS-discuss != BTRFS+Oracle-license troll-ml
>
Before making yourself look like a fool, I suggest you look at the BTRFS
commits.  Can you find a commit submitted by anyone BUT Oracle employees?
 I''ve yet to see any significant contribution from anyone outside the
walls
of Oracle to the project.

--Tim
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On Mon, August 16, 2010 11:01, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> "David Dyer-Bennet" <dd-b at dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>> >> As such, they''ll need to continue to comply with
GPLv2 requirements.
>> >
>> > No, there is definitely no need for Oracle to comply with the GPL
as
>> they
>> > own the code.
>>
>> Ray''s point is, how long would BTRFS remain in the Linux
kernel in that
>> case?
>
> Such a license change can happen at any time. The Linux folks have no
> grant
> that it would not happen.
And they have every right to stop including BTRFS in the kernel whenever
they wish.

-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 11:08 AM, Ray Van Dolson <rvandolson at
esri.com>wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 08:57:19AM -0700, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > "C. Bergstr?m" <codestr0m at osunix.org> wrote:
> >
> > > > I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has
> dual-licensed
> > > > BTRFS.
> > > No.. talk to Chris Mason.. it depends on the linux kernel too
much
> > > already to be available under anything, but GPLv2
> >
> > If he really believes this, then he seems to be missinformed about
legal
> > background.
> >
> > The question is: who wrote the btrfs code and who owns it.
> >
> > If Oracle pays him for writing the code, then Oracle owns the code and
> can
> > relicense it under any license they like.
> >
> > J?rg
>
> I don''t think anyone is arguing that Oracle can relicense their
own
> copyrighted code as they see fit.
>
> The real question is, WHY would they do it?  What would be the business
> motivation here?  Chris Mason would most likely leave Oracle, Red Hat
> would hire him and fork the last GPL''d version of btrfs and Oracle
> would have relegated itself to a non-player in the Linux filesystem
> space...
>
> So, yes, they can do it if they want, I just think they''re not
THAT
> stupid. :)
>
>
>
Or, for all you know, Chris Mason''s contract has a non-compete that
states
if he leaves Oracle he''s not allowed to work on any project he was a
part of
for five years.

The "business motivation" would be to set the competition back a
decade.


--Tim
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On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 09:15:12AM -0700, Tim Cook
wrote:
> Or, for all you know, Chris Mason''s contract has a non-compete
that
> states if he leaves Oracle he''s not allowed to work on any project
he
> was a part of for five years.
> 
> The "business motivation" would be to set the competition back a
decade.
Could be, though I still feel like there are plenty of great filesystem
people in the Linux kernel community who could pick things up just fine
.. 

Anyways, way off topic now -- we''ve both made our points I think. :)

Ray

Tim Cook <tim at cook.ms> wrote:
> > The real question is, WHY would they do it?  What would be the
business
> > motivation here?  Chris Mason would most likely leave Oracle, Red Hat
> > would hire him and fork the last GPL''d version of btrfs and
Oracle
> > would have relegated itself to a non-player in the Linux filesystem
> > space...
> >
> > So, yes, they can do it if they want, I just think they''re
not THAT
> > stupid. :)
> >
> >
> >
> Or, for all you know, Chris Mason''s contract has a non-compete
that states
> if he leaves Oracle he''s not allowed to work on any project he was
a part of
> for five years.
Well, they would need to pay him for this time but who cares ;-)

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

Tim Cook wrote:
>
>
> 2010/8/16 "C. Bergstr?m" <codestr0m at osunix.org 
> <mailto:codestr0m at osunix.org>>
>
>     Joerg Schilling wrote:
>
>         "C. Bergstr?m" <codestr0m at osunix.org
>         <mailto:codestr0m at osunix.org>> wrote:
>
>          
>
>                 I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already
>                 has dual-licensed BTRFS.
>                      
>
>             No.. talk to Chris Mason.. it depends on the linux kernel
>             too much already to be available under anything, but GPLv2
>                
>
>
>         If he really believes this, then he seems to be missinformed
>         about legal background.
>         The question is: who wrote the btrfs code and who owns it.
>
>         If Oracle pays him for writing the code, then Oracle owns the
>         code and can relicense it under any license they like.
>          
>
>     Why don''t all you license trolls go crawl under a rock.. Are
you
>     so dense to believe
>
>     1) Only Oracle devs have by now contributed to btrfs?
>     2) That it''s so tightly intermingled with the linux kernel
code
>     you can''t separate the two of them.
>
>     Just STFU already and go check commit logs and source if you
don''t
>     believe..
>
>     ZFS-discuss != BTRFS+Oracle-license troll-ml
>
>
> Before making yourself look like a fool, I suggest you look at the 
> BTRFS commits.  Can you find a commit submitted by anyone BUT Oracle 
> employees?  I''ve yet to see any significant contribution from
anyone
> outside the walls of Oracle to the project.
I think I''ve probably dug into the issue a bit deeper than you..

http://www.codestrom.com/wandering/2009/03/zfs-vs-btrfs-comparison.html

Oh. .and if you don''t believe me ask Josef Bacik from RH..

I''m not directing this at anyone specifically..  Pretty please..  STFU 
and go back to trolling somewhere else...

2010/8/16 "C. Bergstr?m" <codestr0m at osunix.org>
> Tim Cook wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> 2010/8/16 "C. Bergstr?m" <codestr0m at osunix.org
<mailto:
>> codestr0m at osunix.org>>
>>
>>
>>    Joerg Schilling wrote:
>>
>>        "C. Bergstr?m" <codestr0m at osunix.org
>>        <mailto:codestr0m at osunix.org>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>                I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already
>>                has dual-licensed BTRFS.
>>
>>            No.. talk to Chris Mason.. it depends on the linux kernel
>>            too much already to be available under anything, but GPLv2
>>
>>
>>        If he really believes this, then he seems to be missinformed
>>        about legal background.
>>        The question is: who wrote the btrfs code and who owns it.
>>
>>        If Oracle pays him for writing the code, then Oracle owns the
>>        code and can relicense it under any license they like.
>>
>>    Why don''t all you license trolls go crawl under a rock..
Are you
>>    so dense to believe
>>
>>    1) Only Oracle devs have by now contributed to btrfs?
>>    2) That it''s so tightly intermingled with the linux kernel
code
>>    you can''t separate the two of them.
>>
>>    Just STFU already and go check commit logs and source if you
don''t
>>    believe..
>>
>>    ZFS-discuss != BTRFS+Oracle-license troll-ml
>>
>>
>> Before making yourself look like a fool, I suggest you look at the
BTRFS
>> commits.  Can you find a commit submitted by anyone BUT Oracle
employees?
>>  I''ve yet to see any significant contribution from anyone
outside the walls
>> of Oracle to the project.
>>
> I think I''ve probably dug into the issue a bit deeper than you..
>
> http://www.codestrom.com/wandering/2009/03/zfs-vs-btrfs-comparison.html
>
> Oh. .and if you don''t believe me ask Josef Bacik from RH..
>
> I''m not directing this at anyone specifically..  Pretty please.. 
STFU and
> go back to trolling somewhere else...
>
>
Nobody here appears to be trolling beyond you.  The rest of us were having a
civilized conversation prior to you feeling the need to start throwing out
insults.  Oracle can pull the plug at any time they choose.  *ONE* developer
from Redhat does not change the fact that Oracle owns the rights to the
majority of the code, and can relicense it, or discontinue code updates, as
they see fit.

Grow up.


--Tim
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On Mon, Aug 16 at  8:52, Ray Van Dolson wrote:
>On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 08:48:31AM -0700, Joerg Schilling wrote:
>> Ray Van Dolson <rvandolson at esri.com> wrote:
>>
>> > > I absolutely guarantee Oracle can and likely already has
>> > > dual-licensed BTRFS.
>> >
>> > Well, Oracle obviously would want btrfs to stay as part of the
Linux
>> > kernel rather than die a death of anonymity outside of it...
>> >
>> > As such, they''ll need to continue to comply with GPLv2
requirements.
>>
>> No, there is definitely no need for Oracle to comply with the GPL as
they
>> own the code.
>>
>
>Maybe there''s not legally, but practically there is.  If
they''re not
>GPL compliant, why would Linus or his lieutenants continue to allow the
>code to remain part of the Linux kernel?
The snapshot of btrfs development would obviously remain GPL, that
can''t be "taken away" from the kernel and anyone is free to
continue
GPL development of that work.

However, Oracle can freely close up all future development and change
future licensing.  It obviously won''t affect the previous
kernel-included snapshot, but depending on critical mass, may or may
not result in the bitrot of btrfs in linux.
>And what purpose would btrfs serve Oracle outside of the Linux kernel?
Maybe allowing SANs built upon btrfs to be natively used within
Solaris/Oracle at some point in the future?  Adding btrfs->zfs
conversion utilities that do things like maintain snapshots, data set
properties, etc?

-- 
Eric D. Mudama
edmudama at mail.bounceswoosh.org

On Mon, Aug 16 at 11:15, Tim Cook wrote:
>   Or, for all you know, Chris Mason''s contract has a non-compete
that states
>   if he leaves Oracle he''s not allowed to work on any project he
was a part
>   of for five years.
IANAL, but as my discussions with employment lawyers in my state have
explained to me, a non-compete cannot legally prevent you from earning
a living.  If your one skill is in writing filesystems, you cannot be
prevented from doing so by a noncompete.

However, please get your own legal advice, as it varies significantly
state-to-state.

-- 
Eric D. Mudama
edmudama at mail.bounceswoosh.org

On Mon, 16 Aug 2010, Peter Jeremy wrote:
>
> Irrespective of the above, there is nothing requiring Oracle to release
> any future btrfs or ZFS improvements (or even bugfixes).  They
can''t
> retrospectively change the license on already released code but they
> can put a different (non-OSS) license on any new code.
I don''t have much knowledge of the history of btrfs, but unless Oracle 
is the sole copyright holder for btrfs (seems unlikely), they will 
have to distribute any source updates for binaries they distribute.

Depending on how CDDL is written, and depending on if all contributors 
signed a contract assigning copyrights to Sun, Oracle may be forced to 
distribute source updates to zfs if it has been ''tainted'' by 
contributions by outside developers.

Bob
-- 
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/

On Sun, August 15, 2010 09:19, David Magda wrote:
> On Aug 14, 2010, at 14:54, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
>
>> From:  Russ Price
>
>>
>>> For me, Solaris had zero mindshare since its beginning, on account
of
>>> being prohibitively expensive.
>>
>> I hear that a lot, and I don''t get it.  $400/yr does move it
out of
>> peoples''
>> basements generally, and keeps sol10 out of enormous clustering
>> facilities
>> that don''t have special purposes or free alternatives.  But I
>> wouldn''t call
>> it prohibitively expensive, for a whole lot of purposes.
>
> But that US$ 400 was only if you wanted support. For the last little
> while you could run Solaris 10 legally without a support contract
> without issues.
Looks like there are prices for "service" for things that could
legitimately be called RedHat Enterprise Linux from $80/year up into at
least the mid thousands; this may account for the range of impressions
people have.

The 24/7 Premium subscription for a two-socket server is $1299/year.  The
business-hours plan is $799.

<https://www.redhat.com/wapps/store/catalog.html>

Your point that "free" has been important is very true.  I''m
not sure that
what Oracle says they''re doing with Solaris 11 Express won''t
cover that at
least for business customers, though.  (I do think that they''ll lose
out
on the extensive testing we''ve been providing.)

-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info

On Mon, 16 Aug 2010, Joerg Schilling wrote:
>>
>> However, if Oracle makes a binary release of BTRFS-derived code, they
must
>> release the source as well; BTRFS is under the GPL.
>
> This claim would only be true in case that Oracle does not own the
copyright
> on its'' code...
Can someone provide a link to the requisite source files so that we 
can see the copyright statements?  It may well be that Oracle assigned 
the copyright to some other party.

Bob
-- 
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/

On Sat, August 14, 2010 16:26, Andrej Podzimek wrote:
> Well, a typical conversation about speed and stability usually boils down
> to this:
>
> A: I''ve heard that XYZ is unstable and slow.
> B: Are you sure? Have you tested XYZ? What are your benchmark results?
> Have you had any issues?
> A: No. I *have* *not* *tested* XYZ. I think XYZ is so unstable and slow
> that it''s not worth testing.
Yes indeed!

I can''t afford to test everything carefully.  Like most people, I read
published reports and listen to conversations places like this, and form
an impression of what performs how.

Then I do some testing to verify that something I''m seriously
considering
produces satisfactory performance.  The key there is "satisfactory";
I''m
not looking for the "best", I''m looking for something that
fits in and is
satisfactory.

The more unusual my requirements, and the better defined, the less I can
gain from studying outside test reports.

-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info

On Mon, August 16, 2010 12:36, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> Can someone provide a link to the requisite source files so that we
> can see the copyright statements?  It may well be that Oracle assigned
> the copyright to some other party.

2  * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights reserved.
3  *
4  * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
5  * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
6  * License v2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

<http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/mason/btrfs-unstable.git;a=blob;f=fs/btrfs/root-tree.c;h=2d958be761c84556b39c60afa39999b0f3fd75d6;hb=HEAD>

-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info

Tim Cook <tim at cook.ms> wrote:
> insults.  Oracle can pull the plug at any time they choose.  *ONE*
developer
> from Redhat does not change the fact that Oracle owns the rights to the
> majority of the code, and can relicense it, or discontinue code updates, as
> they see fit.
It would be most unlikely that Oracle did not make a contributor agreement with
people they give the possibility to contribute.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

>> Well, a typical conversation about speed and stability usually boils
down
>> to this:
>>
>> A: I''ve heard that XYZ is unstable and slow.
>> B: Are you sure? Have you tested XYZ? What are your benchmark results?
>> Have you had any issues?
>> A: No. I *have* *not* *tested* XYZ. I think XYZ is so unstable and slow
>> that it''s not worth testing.
>
> Yes indeed!
>
> I can''t afford to test everything carefully.  Like most people, I
read
> published reports and listen to conversations places like this, and form
> an impression of what performs how.
>
> Then I do some testing to verify that something I''m seriously
considering
> produces satisfactory performance.  The key there is
"satisfactory"; I''m
> not looking for the "best", I''m looking for something
that fits in and is
> satisfactory.
>
> The more unusual my requirements, and the better defined, the less I can
> gain from studying outside test reports.
My only point was: There is no published report saying that stability or
*performance* of Btrfs will be worse (or better) than that of ZFS. This is
because nobody can guess how Btrfs will perform once it''s finished. (In
fact nobody even knows *when* it is going to be finished. My guess was that it
might not be considered "experimental" in one year''s time,
but that''s just a shot in the dark.)

For that reason, spreading myths about "stability & performance &
maturity" serves no purpose. (And this is what caused my (over)reaction.)

I did not say there is something wrong about published reports. I often read
them. (Who doesn''t?) However, there are no trustworthy reports on this
topic yet, since Btrfs is unfinished. Let''s see some examples:

(1)
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=zfs_ext4_btrfs&num=1
(2) http://www.dhtusa.com/media/IOPerf_CMG09DHT.pdf

Based on (1), one could say that Btrfs outperforms ZFS with ease and confidence.
Unfinished Btrfs versus a port of ZFS to FreeBSD -- that sounds fair,
doesn''t it? Well, in fact such a "comparison" is neither fair
nor meaningful. Furthermore, benchmarks from Phoronix don''t seem to
have a good reputation... (See the P. S. for details.)

In (2), ZFS performs (much) better than (what will once be) Btrfs. However, the
results in (2) are related to a 2.6.30 kernel, which is as *old* as June 2009...
Nobody knows how the tested file systems would perform today.

Yes, Btrfs is still somewhat immature. Yes, Btrfs is not ready for serious
deployments (right now, in August 2010). So it''s way to soon to compare
the stability and performance of Btrfs and ZFS.

Disclaimer: I use Reiser4, Ext4, ZFS, Btrfs and Ext3 (in this order of
frequency) and I''m not an advocate of any of them.

Andrej


P. S. As far as Phoronix is concerned... Well, I remember how they once used a
malfunctioning and crippled Reiser4 implementation (hacked by the people around
the ZEN patchset so that it caused data corruption (!) and kernel crashes) and
"compared" it to other file systems. (That foolish Reiser4
"benchmark" can be found here:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=reiser4_benchmarks&num=1)

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Andrej Podzimek <andrej at podzimek.org> wrote:
> P. S. As far as Phoronix is concerned... Well, I remember how they once
used a malfunctioning and crippled Reiser4 implementation (hacked by the people
around the ZEN patchset so that it caused data corruption (!) and kernel
crashes) and "compared" it to other file systems. (That foolish
Reiser4 "benchmark" can be found here:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=reiser4_benchmarks&num=1)
If you like to compare Solaris with Linux, it is hard to get comparable 
constraints in order to comparable results.

Linux has different goals for data security at certain check points.

I know of ext* performance checks where people did run gtar to unpack a linux 
kernel archive and these people did nothing but metering the wall clock time 
for gtar.

I repeated this test and it turned out, that Linux did not even start to write 
to the disk when gtar finished.

Then I checked what Solaris did on UFS with logging, Solaris did start 
immediately with disk transfers, so could it be faster than Linux?

Well I switched to star that by default calls fsync() at the end of extracting 
for every single file. Solaris was not slower than Linux with the speudo gtar 
test, but when star finished the file system was in a consistent state. GOning 
back to Linux but using star with fsync resulted in a comparable test but Linux 
now was 4x slower than Solaris.

It seems that Linux is not designed to be fast but to create the impression of
being fast.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

On Mon, August 16, 2010 15:35, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> I know of ext* performance checks where people did run gtar to unpack a
> linux
> kernel archive and these people did nothing but metering the wall clock
> time
> for gtar.
>
> I repeated this test and it turned out, that Linux did not even start to
> write
> to the disk when gtar finished.
As a test of ext? performance, that does seem to be lacking something!

I guess it''s a consequence of the low sound levels of modern disk
drives;
you go back enough years, that error couldn''t have passed unnoticed :-)
.

-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info

"David Dyer-Bennet" <dd-b at dd-b.net> wrote:
> > I repeated this test and it turned out, that Linux did not even start
to
> > write
> > to the disk when gtar finished.
>
> As a test of ext? performance, that does seem to be lacking something!
>
> I guess it''s a consequence of the low sound levels of modern disk
drives;
> you go back enough years, that error couldn''t have passed
unnoticed :-) .
Well, the HDD LED is not a matter of sound....


J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

>>>>> "pj" == Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy at
alcatel-lucent.com> writes:
>>>>> "gd" == Garrett D''Amore <garrett at
nexenta.com> writes:
>>>>> "cb" == C Bergstr?m <codestr0m at
osunix.org> writes:
>>>>> "fc" == Frank Cusack <frank+lists/zfs at
linetwo.net> writes:
>>>>> "tc" == Tim Cook <tim at cook.ms> writes:
    pj> Given that both provide similar features, it''s difficult to
    pj> see why Oracle would continue to invest in both.

So far I think the tricky parts of filesystems have been the work of 1
- 3 people.  It''s difficult to see why the kind of developer
who''s
capable of advancing those filesystems would continue to work in a
negative environment like this one, but maybe they will.  Such a
developer can get money from several places, and I''ve never heard of
something else this crew brings to the table than money.  That''s a
bleak outlook on their ability to actually facilitate relevant
``investment,'''' but who knows!

    gd> Oracle *will* spend more on Solaris than Sun did.  I believe
    gd> that.

hahaha, yup.  At least I believe their saying they will try to do it.

    fc> all public companies are very, very greedy.

yeah, it''s not helpful to anthropomorphize them, nor tell human
interest 1930''s newsreel-hero stories about their supposedly genius
and/or evil leaders, nor imagine yourself into their point of view
like they are your favorite soccer team.

What''s needed is clear focus on the rules of collaboration, and how
these rules determine the future of your own greedy schemes.

    cb> It was a community of system administrators and nearly no
    cb> developers.

sysadmins need to care about licenses because their investment cycle
in a platform is, apparently, long compared to the stability of a
publicly-traded company.

    tc> *ONE* developer from Redhat does not change the fact that
    tc> Oracle owns the rights to the majority of the code,

one developer making the tinyest change to line breaks and then
asserting his copyright does change everything, if it gets committed
to trunk and used as the basis for further work that can''t be rolled
back.

    gd> we are in the process of some enhancements to this
    gd> code which will make it into Illumos, but probably not into
    gd> Oracle Solaris unless they pull from Illumos. :-)

yeah, well, add your copyright to it, and thus see that it doesn''t
make it into Solaris 11.  Without hg, there''s no longer any incentive
to sign over your copyright to them in exchange for getting your
changes committed, so not to keep it for yourself would be negligent
and silly.  Good or bad, it''s just reality.

FWIW, the SFLC usually suggests you get copyright assignments from
every member to a single trusted organization so the license can be
changed someday when a change might seem obviously wise.  For example,
Sun was careful to get assignments from all contributors, which at one
time had good hypotheticals as well as the current bad reality: they
could have released their tree under Linux-compatible GPL some day if
convinced.  ISTR some cheap talk about this right after most of Java
was released as GPL.  If Sun had included some Joerg Schilling-owned
pieces in there, his one or two files would become a poison pill
making license change impossible.

However when there is no such trusted organization around, I think
copyrights held by multiple orgs like Linux has are more sustainable.
Nexenta clearly isn''t a ``trusted organization,'''' but
having a source
tree copyrighted by both Nexenta and Oracle could make the terms more
stable than they''d be for a tree copyrighted by either alone.

I don''t think the Announcement means much for ZFS, though: it means
releases will come only every year or two, which is about the maximum
pace FreeBSD can keep up with so it will actually bring Solaris and
FreeBSD closer in ZFS feature-parity not further apart.

However, if you were using ZFS along with things like infiniband
iSER/SRP/NFS-RDMA, zones, 10gig nics with cpu-affinity-optimized TCP,
xen dom0, virtualbox, dtrace, or waiting/hoping for pNFS, or if you
foolishly became addicted to proprietary SunPro and Sun''s debugger,
then you might be annoyed or even set back a few years by the
Announcement since FreeBSD has none of these things.

Post-Announcement, ZFS will no longer entice people to experiment with
these features, but those who listened to the last half-decade of
apologist''s, ``let''s wait patiently and quietly.  More code
will be
liberated, even the C compiler.  Just give them time,'''' those
suckers
have now got problems.  I''ve got a heap of IB cards trying to convince
me to bury my head in the sand or keep ``hoping'''' instead of
reacting.
I wish I''d invested my time into an OS I could continue using under
consistent terms.
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dd> 2  * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights reserved.
    dd> 3  *
    dd> 4  * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
    dd> 5  * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
    dd> 6  * License v2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

    dd>
<http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/mason/btrfs-unstable.git;a=blob;f=fs/btrfs/root-tree.c;h=2d958be761c84556b39c60afa39999b0f3fd75d6;hb=HEAD>

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/mason/btrfs-unstable.git;a=blob;f=fs/btrfs/free-space-cache.c;h=f488fac04d99ea45eea93607bbf17c021b5b2207;hb=HEAD

   1 /*
   2  * Copyright (C) 2008 Red Hat.  All rights reserved.
   3  *
   4  * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
   5  * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
   6  * License v2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

see, that''s good, and is a realistic future scenario for ZFS, AFAICT:
there can be a branch that''s safe to collaborate on, which cannot go
into Solaris 11 and cannot be taken proprietary by Nexenta, either.
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> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of David Dyer-Bennet
> 
> However, if Oracle makes a binary release of BTRFS-derived code, they
> must
> release the source as well; BTRFS is under the GPL.
When a copyright holder releases something under GPL, it only means
they''ve
granted you and the rest of the world permission to use it according to the
terms of GPL.

The copyright holder always retains permission for themselves to
redistribute in any form, under a different license if they want to.

If you (Microsoft) are a developer of a proprietary product, and you want to
link in some GPL library and keep it private and proprietary, you can
attempt negotiations with the copyright holder, to get that code released to
you for your purposes, under terms which are not GPL.

> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> 
> Can someone provide a link to the requisite source files so that we
> can see the copyright statements?  It may well be that Oracle assigned
> the copyright to some other party.
BTRFS is inside the linux kernel.  
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

There is no other copyright written in there (that I can find with grep) but
the GPL does say something to contributors, which could "fuzz" the
line
between copyright owner for contributions added by somebody outside the FSF.
"it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your
rights
to work written entirely by you"

So maybe the contributor retains some rights to reproduce their work in
other situations, under a different license.

> 
> see, that''s good, and is a realistic future scenario for ZFS,
AFAICT:
> there can be a branch that''s safe to collaborate on, which cannot
go
> into Solaris 11 and cannot be taken proprietary by Nexenta, either.
In fact, we are in the process of creating a non-profit foundation for
Illumos which can receive copyright assignment, and which will have a
board that will not be dominated by any one company, and a set of rules
which will guarantee that the code is not dependent on the good will or
good behavior of any company or even group of companies.

In fact, Nexenta is *strongly* in favor of this kind of organization, so
while the funding for it comes from Nexenta (mostly), Nexenta will not
have any controlling influence.

It takes time to set this stuff up, so please be patient.

	- Garrett

> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Miles Nordin
> 
>    1 /*
>    2  * Copyright (C) 2008 Red Hat.  All rights reserved.
Holy crap.  That''s three different results.  One said oracle, one said
red
hat, and one said FSF.  So I went back and checked again ...

Parts copyright Oracle.  Parts copyright Red Hat.  Parts copyright Aron
Griffis.

grep -r Copyright linux-2.6.35.2
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/ordered-data.h: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/tree-log.c: * Copyright (C) 2008 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/btrfs_inode.h: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/root-tree.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/disk-io.h: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/async-thread.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/transaction.h: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/ioctl.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/xattr.h: * Copyright (C) 2007 Red Hat.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/acl.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Red Hat.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/compression.c: * Copyright (C) 2008 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/sysfs.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/xattr.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Red Hat.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/volumes.h: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/ref-cache.h: * Copyright (C) 2008 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/version.sh:# Copyright 2008, Aron Griffis
<agriffis at n01se.net>
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/version.sh:# Copyright 2008, Oracle
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/super.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/disk-io.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/ordered-data.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/locking.c: * Copyright (C) 2008 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/dir-item.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/file.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/delayed-ref.h: * Copyright (C) 2008 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/file-item.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/volumes.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/ref-cache.c: * Copyright (C) 2008 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/inode-item.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/orphan.c: * Copyright (C) 2008 Red Hat.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/extent-tree.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/delayed-ref.c: * Copyright (C) 2009 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/ctree.h: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/hash.h: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/ioctl.h: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/ctree.c: * Copyright (C) 2007,2008 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/inode-map.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/zlib.c: * Copyright (C) 2008 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/zlib.c: * Copyright ?? 2001-2007 Red Hat, Inc.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/async-thread.h: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/inode.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/relocation.c: * Copyright (C) 2009 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/print-tree.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/transaction.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/tree-log.h: * Copyright (C) 2008 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/free-space-cache.h: * Copyright (C) 2009 Oracle.
All rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/locking.h: * Copyright (C) 2008 Oracle.  All rights
reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/print-tree.h: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/free-space-cache.c: * Copyright (C) 2008 Red Hat.
All rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/struct-funcs.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/tree-defrag.c: * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.
linux-2.6.35.2/fs/btrfs/compression.h: * Copyright (C) 2008 Oracle.  All
rights reserved.

On 2010-Aug-17 06:07:52 +0800, Miles Nordin <carton at Ivy.NET>
wrote:
>However, if you were using ZFS along with things like infiniband
>iSER/SRP/NFS-RDMA, zones, 10gig nics with cpu-affinity-optimized TCP,
>xen dom0, virtualbox, dtrace, or waiting/hoping for pNFS, or if you
>foolishly became addicted to proprietary SunPro and Sun''s debugger,
>then you might be annoyed or even set back a few years by the
>Announcement since FreeBSD has none of these things.
Well, FreeBSD has jails (which are functionally equivalent to zones),
virtualbox and dtrace.  If someone wants to add the remaining features
to FreeBSD (or Linux or ...), I''m sure the project would welcome the
assistance.

-- 
Peter Jeremy

On 2010-Aug-17 07:13:07 +0800, Edward Ned Harvey <shill at nedharvey.com>
wrote:
>> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
>> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Miles Nordin
>> 
>>    1 /*
>>    2  * Copyright (C) 2008 Red Hat.  All rights reserved.
>
>Holy crap.  That''s three different results.  One said oracle, one
said red
>hat, and one said FSF.  So I went back and checked again ...
>
>Parts copyright Oracle.  Parts copyright Red Hat.  Parts copyright Aron
>Griffis.
Which means that Oracle can''t (easily) avoid sharing any enhancements
it makes to btrfs but there''s nothing requiring it to make any further
enhancements at all - it can just walk away from the code.

-- 
Peter Jeremy

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 6:02 PM, Edward Ned Harvey <shill at
nedharvey.com>wrote:
> > From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> >
> > Can someone provide a link to the requisite source files so that we
> > can see the copyright statements?  It may well be that Oracle assigned
> > the copyright to some other party.
>
> BTRFS is inside the linux kernel.
> Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>
> There is no other copyright written in there (that I can find with grep)
> but
> the GPL does say something to contributors, which could "fuzz"
the line
> between copyright owner for contributions added by somebody outside the
> FSF.
> "it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your
> rights
> to work written entirely by you"
>
> So maybe the contributor retains some rights to reproduce their work in
> other situations, under a different license.
>
You wouldn''t see any other license.  THAT copy is GPL ONLY.  There is
absolutely no requirement for them to list any other license than GPL on the
code they release under GPL.

Opensolaris has CDDL licenses on all the code, and CDDL only.  I absolutely
guarantee there is code in Opensolaris that was/is dual-licensed.

--Tim
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David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
> On Sun, August 15, 2010 20:44, Peter Jeremy wrote:
>
>   
>> Irrespective of the above, there is nothing requiring Oracle to release
>> any future btrfs or ZFS improvements (or even bugfixes).  They
can''t
>> retrospectively change the license on already released code but they
>> can put a different (non-OSS) license on any new code.
>>     
>
> That''s true.
>
> However, if Oracle makes a binary release of BTRFS-derived code, they must
> release the source as well; BTRFS is under the GPL.
>
> So, if they''re going to use it in any way as a product, they have
to
> release the source.  If they want to use it just internally they can do
> anything they want, of course.
>   
Technically Oracle could release a non-GPL version of btrfs, if they 
removed (and presumably re-wrote) all the non-Oracle commits to the 
source.  An author is allowed to release programs under multiple 
licenses simultaneously, so if Oracle only uses the Oracle developed 
btrfs code, they could re-release as binary only.  Sorting this out and 
re-writing the code written by others is probably more work than it is 
worth for Oracle so they probably won''t do it.  Oracle
wouldn''t gain any
friends doing this and would expose themselves to a lot a scrutiny as a 
lot a people watch for GPL violators (this action would be a big yellow 
flag to the other btrfs contributors to look for GPL violations).


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On 8/16/10 9:57 AM -0400 Ross Walker wrote:
> No, the only real issue is the license and I highly doubt Oracle will
> re-release ZFS under GPL to dilute it''s competitive advantage.
You''re saying Oracle wants to keep zfs out of Linux?

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 11:17 PM, Frank Cusack
<frank+lists/zfs at linetwo.net>wrote:
> On 8/16/10 9:57 AM -0400 Ross Walker wrote:
>
>> No, the only real issue is the license and I highly doubt Oracle will
>> re-release ZFS under GPL to dilute it''s competitive advantage.
>>
>
> You''re saying Oracle wants to keep zfs out of Linux?
>
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
>

why would Oracle want ZFS in linux when it makes the value of Solaris
greater?
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On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 5:11 AM, Andrej Podzimek <andrej at podzimek.org>
wrote:
> I did not say there is something wrong about published reports. I often
read
> them. (Who doesn''t?) However, there are no trustworthy reports on
this topic
> yet, since Btrfs is unfinished. Let''s see some examples:
>
> (1)
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=zfs_ext4_btrfs&num=1
My little few yen in this massacre: Phoronix usually compares apples
with oranges and pigs with candies. So be careful.
> Disclaimer: I use Reiser4
A "Killer FS"?. :-)

-- 
Kind regards, BM

Things, that are stupid at the beginning, rarely ends up wisely.

Miles Nordin <carton at Ivy.NET> wrote:
>     dd> 2  * Copyright (C) 2007 Oracle.  All rights reserved.
>     dd> 3  *
>     dd> 4  * This program is free software; you can redistribute it
and/or
>     dd> 5  * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
>     dd> 6  * License v2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.
>
>     dd>
<http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/mason/btrfs-unstable.git;a=blob;f=fs/btrfs/root-tree.c;h=2d958be761c84556b39c60afa39999b0f3fd75d6;hb=HEAD>
>
>
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/mason/btrfs-unstable.git;a=blob;f=fs/btrfs/free-space-cache.c;h=f488fac04d99ea45eea93607bbf17c021b5b2207;hb=HEAD
>
>    1 /*
>    2  * Copyright (C) 2008 Red Hat.  All rights reserved.
>    3  *
>    4  * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
>    5  * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
>    6  * License v2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.
>
> see, that''s good, and is a realistic future scenario for ZFS,
AFAICT:
> there can be a branch that''s safe to collaborate on, which cannot
go
> into Solaris 11 and cannot be taken proprietary by Nexenta, either.
It seems that you miss the basics of Copyright.

In order to find out whether Redhat really owns rights, you first need to find 
out whether this code is copyrightable at all. Small portions of code just 
become a part of the original work unless they have a sufficient level of 
creation.

If you stay with OpenSource, even larger parts are no problem as minor 
contributors do not get the right to decide about the "way of
marketing".
Minor contributors just have the right to get payed by the right percentage of 
the whole, which is a simple computaion in the OSS world.

For more information, see the article from the wife of Eric Raymond:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/Licensing-HOWTO.html

She is a lawyer....

http://www.osscc.net/en/licenses.html

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

Frank Cusack <frank+lists/zfs at linetwo.net> wrote:
> On 8/16/10 9:57 AM -0400 Ross Walker wrote:
> > No, the only real issue is the license and I highly doubt Oracle will
> > re-release ZFS under GPL to dilute it''s competitive
advantage.
>
> You''re saying Oracle wants to keep zfs out of Linux?
In order to get zfs into Linux, you don''t need to change the license
for ZFS
but the mind of the Linux folks.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

BM wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 5:11 AM, Andrej Podzimek <andrej at
podzimek.org> wrote:
>   
>> I did not say there is something wrong about published reports. I often
read
>> them. (Who doesn''t?) However, there are no trustworthy reports
on this topic
>> yet, since Btrfs is unfinished. Let''s see some examples:
>>
>> (1)
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=zfs_ext4_btrfs&num=1
>>     
>
> My little few yen in this massacre: Phoronix usually compares apples
> with oranges and pigs with candies. So be careful.
>
>   
>> Disclaimer: I use Reiser4
>>     
>
> A "Killer FS"?. :-)
>
>   
ZFS is the "last word in file systems".

Ben Rockwood''s Cuddletech says "Cuddletech: Use Unix or die".
http://www.cuddletech.com/

Both sound pretty final.  Might even be religious OS (operating systems) 
or FS war propaganda...

:)

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On 16 Aug 2010, at 23:11, Andrej Podzimek wrote:
> 
> My only point was: There is no published report saying that stability or
*performance* of Btrfs will be worse (or better) than that of ZFS. This is
because nobody can guess how Btrfs will perform once it''s finished. (In
fact nobody even knows *when* it is going to be finished. My guess was that it
might not be considered "experimental" in one year''s time,
but that''s just a shot in the dark.)
> 

I know that. btrfs will never be finished. same as ZFS. there is always space
for an improvement. always.

Sami

On Aug 16, 2010, at 11:17 PM, Frank Cusack <frank+lists/zfs at
linetwo.net> wrote:
> On 8/16/10 9:57 AM -0400 Ross Walker wrote:
>> No, the only real issue is the license and I highly doubt Oracle will
>> re-release ZFS under GPL to dilute it''s competitive advantage.
> 
> You''re saying Oracle wants to keep zfs out of Linux?
I would if I were them, wouldn''t you?

Linux has already eroded the low-end of the Solaris business model, if Linux had
ZFS it could possibly erode out the middle tier as well.

Solaris with only high-end customers wouldn''t be very profitable
(unless seriously marked up in price), thus unsustainable as a business.

Sun didn''t get this, but Oracle does.

-Ross

On Aug 17, 2010, at 5:44 AM, Joerg.Schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (Joerg
Schilling) wrote:
> Frank Cusack <frank+lists/zfs at linetwo.net> wrote:
> 
>> On 8/16/10 9:57 AM -0400 Ross Walker wrote:
>>> No, the only real issue is the license and I highly doubt Oracle
will
>>> re-release ZFS under GPL to dilute it''s competitive
advantage.
>> 
>> You''re saying Oracle wants to keep zfs out of Linux?
> 
> In order to get zfs into Linux, you don''t need to change the
license for ZFS
> but the mind of the Linux folks.
I''m afraid you will have better luck catching a moon beam in your hands
then convincing the likes of RS. I''d bet even Charlie Manson would say,
dude that guy is crazy.

And there lies the problem, you need the agreement of all copyright holders in a
GPL project to change it''s licensing terms and some just will not
budge.

-Ross

>> I did not say there is something wrong about published reports. I often
read
>> them. (Who doesn''t?) However, there are no trustworthy reports
on this topic
>> yet, since Btrfs is unfinished. Let''s see some examples:
>>
>> (1)
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=zfs_ext4_btrfs&num=1
>
> My little few yen in this massacre: Phoronix usually compares apples
> with oranges and pigs with candies. So be careful.
Nobody said one should blindly trust Phoronix. ;-) In fact I clearly said the
contrary. I mentioned the famous example of a totally absurd
"benchmark" that used crippled and crashing code from the ZEN patchset
to benchmark Reiser4.
>> Disclaimer: I use Reiser4
>
> A "Killer FS"?. :-)
I had been using Reiser4 for quite a long time before Hans Reiser was convicted
for the murder of his wife. There was absolutely no (objective technical) reason
to make a change afterwards. :-) As far as speed is concerned, Reiser4 really is
a "Killer FS" (in a very positive sense). It is now maintained by
Edward Shishkin, a former Namesys employee. Patches are available for each
kernel version.
(http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/edward/reiser4/reiser4-for-2.6/)

Admittedly, with the advent of Ext4 and Btrfs, Reiser4 is not so
"brilliant" any more. Reiser4 could have been a much larger project
with many features known from today''s ZFS/Btrfs (encryption,
compression and perhaps even snapshots and subvolumes), but long disputes around
kernel integration and the events around Hans Reiser blocked the whole effort
and Reiser4 lost its advantage.

Andrej

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On 17-Aug-10, at 1:05 PM, Andrej Podzimek wrote:
>>> I did not say there is something wrong about published reports. I  
>>> often read
>>> them. (Who doesn''t?) However, there are no trustworthy
reports on
>>> this topic
>>> yet, since Btrfs is unfinished. Let''s see some examples:
>>>
>>> (1)
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=zfs_ext4_btrfs&num=1
>>
>> My little few yen in this massacre: Phoronix usually compares apples
>> with oranges and pigs with candies. So be careful.
>
> Nobody said one should blindly trust Phoronix. ;-) In fact I clearly  
> said the contrary. I mentioned the famous example of a totally  
> absurd "benchmark" that used crippled and crashing code from the
ZEN
> patchset to benchmark Reiser4.
>
>>> Disclaimer: I use Reiser4
>>
>> A "Killer FS"?. :-)
>
> I had been using Reiser4 for quite a long time before Hans Reiser  
> was convicted for the murder of his wife. There was absolutely no  
> (objective technical) reason to make a change afterwards. :-)
Thankyou, well said!! The ''killer'' gag wasn''t funny
the first time and
it certainly isn''t any funnier now. It''s in extremely poor
taste,
apart from being childish.
> As far as speed is concerned, Reiser4 really is a "Killer FS" (in
a
> very positive sense).
Reiser3 is fast and solid too, I like others have used it happily on  
dozens of servers for many years and continue to do so. (At least,  
where I can''t use ZFS :-X)
> It is now maintained by Edward Shishkin, a former Namesys employee.
Who is also sharing his expertise with the btrfs project, a very  
positive outcome.

--Toby
> Patches are available for each kernel version.
(http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/edward/reiser4/reiser4-for-2.6/
> )
>
> Admittedly, with the advent of Ext4 and Btrfs, Reiser4 is not so  
> "brilliant" any more. Reiser4 could have been a much larger
project
> with many features known from today''s ZFS/Btrfs (encryption,  
> compression and perhaps even snapshots and subvolumes), but long  
> disputes around kernel integration and the events around Hans Reiser  
> blocked the whole effort and Reiser4 lost its advantage.
>
> Andrej
>
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss

On Tue, 17 Aug 2010, Ross Walker wrote:
>
> And there lies the problem, you need the agreement of all copyright 
> holders in a GPL project to change it''s licensing terms and some 
> just will not budge.
Joerg is correct that CDDL code can legally live right alongside the 
GPLv2 kernel code and run in the same program.  It is a "mind set" 
issue with the Linux developers rather than a legal one.

If ZFS was not tied to a big greedy controlling company then the Linux 
kernel developers would be more likely to change their mind.

Bob
-- 
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/

On Tue, 2010-08-17 at 14:04 -0500, Bob Friesenhahn
wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010, Ross Walker wrote:
> >
> > And there lies the problem, you need the agreement of all copyright 
> > holders in a GPL project to change it''s licensing terms and
some
> > just will not budge.
> 
> Joerg is correct that CDDL code can legally live right alongside the 
> GPLv2 kernel code and run in the same program.  It is a "mind
set"
> issue with the Linux developers rather than a legal one.
My understanding is that no, this is not possible.  IANAL, but I think
the provisions of CDDL with respect to granting patent license and
choice of law venue are incompatible with GPL''s stipulations.
Conventional wisdom and detailed analysis done by lawyers is that you
can''t mix and match these licenses this way.
> 
> If ZFS was not tied to a big greedy controlling company then the Linux 
> kernel developers would be more likely to change their mind.
No, its a license problem too.  There may be NIH factors and reasonable
engineering disagreements too.

	- Garrett

On 8/17/10 9:14 AM -0400 Ross Walker wrote:
> On Aug 16, 2010, at 11:17 PM, Frank Cusack <frank+lists/zfs at
linetwo.net>
> wrote:
>
>> On 8/16/10 9:57 AM -0400 Ross Walker wrote:
>>> No, the only real issue is the license and I highly doubt Oracle
will
>>> re-release ZFS under GPL to dilute it''s competitive
advantage.
>>
>> You''re saying Oracle wants to keep zfs out of Linux?
>
> I would if I were them, wouldn''t you?
I''m not sure either way.

If Oracle really wants to keep it out of Linux, that means it wants
to keep it out of FreeBSD also.  Either way, to keep it out it needs
to make it closed source, and as they say, the genie is already out
of the bottle.

I don''t agree that there''s a licensing problem, but that
doesn''t matter.
Distributions, which is how nearly EVERYONE uses Linux, are free to
include zfs on their own.  All the major distributions already patch
the kernel heavily.

On 8/17/10 3:31 PM +0900 BM wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 5:11 AM, Andrej Podzimek <andrej at
podzimek.org>
> wrote:
>> Disclaimer: I use Reiser4
>
> A "Killer FS"?. :-)
LOL

"Garrett D''Amore" <garrett at nexenta.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-08-17 at 14:04 -0500, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> > On Tue, 17 Aug 2010, Ross Walker wrote:
> > >
> > > And there lies the problem, you need the agreement of all
copyright
> > > holders in a GPL project to change it''s licensing terms
and some
> > > just will not budge.
> > 
> > Joerg is correct that CDDL code can legally live right alongside the 
> > GPLv2 kernel code and run in the same program.  It is a "mind
set"
> > issue with the Linux developers rather than a legal one.
>
> My understanding is that no, this is not possible.  IANAL, but I think
> the provisions of CDDL with respect to granting patent license and
> choice of law venue are incompatible with GPL''s stipulations.
> Conventional wisdom and detailed analysis done by lawyers is that you
> can''t mix and match these licenses this way.
You are obviously mistaken. The text you quote was not written by lawyers but 
by laymen. If you did ask laywers, you would get a confirmation for my 
statements.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 3:01 PM, Frank Cusack
<frank+lists/zfs at linetwo.net>wrote:
> On 8/17/10 9:14 AM -0400 Ross Walker wrote:
>
>> On Aug 16, 2010, at 11:17 PM, Frank Cusack <frank+lists/zfs at
linetwo.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>  On 8/16/10 9:57 AM -0400 Ross Walker wrote:
>>>
>>>> No, the only real issue is the license and I highly doubt
Oracle will
>>>> re-release ZFS under GPL to dilute it''s competitive
advantage.
>>>>
>>>
>>> You''re saying Oracle wants to keep zfs out of Linux?
>>>
>>
>> I would if I were them, wouldn''t you?
>>
>
> I''m not sure either way.
>
> If Oracle really wants to keep it out of Linux, that means it wants
> to keep it out of FreeBSD also.  Either way, to keep it out it needs
> to make it closed source, and as they say, the genie is already out
> of the bottle.
>
> I don''t agree that there''s a licensing problem, but that
doesn''t matter.
> Distributions, which is how nearly EVERYONE uses Linux, are free to
> include zfs on their own.  All the major distributions already patch
> the kernel heavily.
>
>
FreeBSD has nowhere near the installed base  of Linux.  There is also
absolutely 0 "Enterprise" support for FreeBSD.  ZFS will not change
that.
 It is not a threat to Oracle.

--Tim
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>>>>> "gd" == Garrett D''Amore <garrett at
nexenta.com> writes:
     >> Joerg is correct that CDDL code can legally live right
     >> alongside the GPLv2 kernel code and run in the same program.

    gd> My understanding is that no, this is not possible.

GPLv2 and CDDL are incompatible:

 http://www.fsf.org/licensing/education/licenses/index_html/#GPLIncompatibleLicenses

however Linus''s ``interpretation'''' of the GPL
considers that ''insmod''
is ``mere aggregation'''' and not ``linking'''',
but subject to rules of
``bad taste''''.  Although this may sound ridiculous, there are
blob
drivers for wireless chips, video cards, and storage controllers
relying on this ``interpretation'''' for over a decade.  I think
a ZFS
porting project could do the same and end up emitting the same warning
about a ``tained'''' kernel that proprietary modules do:

 http://lwn.net/Articles/147070/

the quickest link I found of Linus actually speaking about his
``interpretation'''', his thoughts are IMHO completely muddled
(which
might be intentional):

 http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/12/3/228

thus ultimately I think the question of whether it''s legal or not
isn''t very interesting compared to ``is it moral?''''
(what some of us
might care about), and ``is it likely to survive long enough and not
blow back in your face fiercely enough that it''s a good enough
business case to get funded somehow?'''' (the question all the
hardware
manufacturers shipping blob drivers presumably asked themselves)

My own view on blob modules is: 

 * that it''s immoral, and that Linus is both taking the wrong position
   and doing it without authority.  Even if his position is
   ``everyone, please let''s not fight,'''' in practice
that is a strong
   position favouring GPL violation, and his squirrelyness may look
   like taking a soft view but in practice it throws so much sand into
   the debate it ends up being actually a much stronger position than
   saying outright, ``I think insmod is mere aggregation.'''' 
My
   copyright shouldn''t have to bow to your celebrity.

 * and secondly that it does make business sense and is unlikely to
   cause any problems, because no one is able to challenge his
   authority.

Whatever is the view on binary blob modules, I think it''s the same
view on ZFS w.r.t. the law, but not necessarily the same view
w.r.t. morality or business, because the copyright law itself is
immoral according to the views of many and the business risk depends
on how much you piss people off.
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Oh, as an insmod, I think the question is quite cloudy indeed, since you
get into questions about what forms a derivative product.

I was looking at the original statement of the two licenses running
together in the same program far too simply .... of course when
considered with dynamic link (which insmod may be considered to be a
form of), the boundaries of what is the program, and what is a
derivative work are very murky. 

Unfortunately, AFAIK, the boundaries have never been tested.  I think
asking a non-technical court to judge the differences between static,
dynamic, and insmod style linking is probably going to be difficult.

	- Garrett


On Tue, 2010-08-17 at 17:07 -0400, Miles Nordin wrote:
> >>>>> "gd" == Garrett D''Amore <garrett
at nexenta.com> writes:
> 
>      >> Joerg is correct that CDDL code can legally live right
>      >> alongside the GPLv2 kernel code and run in the same program.
> 
>     gd> My understanding is that no, this is not possible.
> 
> GPLv2 and CDDL are incompatible:
> 
> 
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/education/licenses/index_html/#GPLIncompatibleLicenses
> 
> however Linus''s ``interpretation'''' of the GPL
considers that ''insmod''
> is ``mere aggregation'''' and not
``linking'''', but subject to rules of
> ``bad taste''''.  Although this may sound ridiculous, there
are blob
> drivers for wireless chips, video cards, and storage controllers
> relying on this ``interpretation'''' for over a decade.  I
think a ZFS
> porting project could do the same and end up emitting the same warning
> about a ``tained'''' kernel that proprietary modules do:
> 
>  http://lwn.net/Articles/147070/
> 
> the quickest link I found of Linus actually speaking about his
> ``interpretation'''', his thoughts are IMHO completely
muddled (which
> might be intentional):
> 
>  http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/12/3/228
> 
> thus ultimately I think the question of whether it''s legal or not
> isn''t very interesting compared to ``is it
moral?'''' (what some of us
> might care about), and ``is it likely to survive long enough and not
> blow back in your face fiercely enough that it''s a good enough
> business case to get funded somehow?'''' (the question all
the hardware
> manufacturers shipping blob drivers presumably asked themselves)
> 
> My own view on blob modules is: 
> 
>  * that it''s immoral, and that Linus is both taking the wrong
position
>    and doing it without authority.  Even if his position is
>    ``everyone, please let''s not fight,'''' in
practice that is a strong
>    position favouring GPL violation, and his squirrelyness may look
>    like taking a soft view but in practice it throws so much sand into
>    the debate it ends up being actually a much stronger position than
>    saying outright, ``I think insmod is mere
aggregation.''''  My
>    copyright shouldn''t have to bow to your celebrity.
> 
>  * and secondly that it does make business sense and is unlikely to
>    cause any problems, because no one is able to challenge his
>    authority.
> 
> Whatever is the view on binary blob modules, I think it''s the same
> view on ZFS w.r.t. the law, but not necessarily the same view
> w.r.t. morality or business, because the copyright law itself is
> immoral according to the views of many and the business risk depends
> on how much you piss people off.
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss

On 8/17/10 3:17 PM -0500 Tim Cook wrote:
>> If Oracle really wants to keep it out of Linux, that means it wants
>> to keep it out of FreeBSD also.  Either way, to keep it out it needs
>> to make it closed source, and as they say, the genie is already out
>> of the bottle.
>>
>> I don''t agree that there''s a licensing problem, but
that doesn''t matter.
>> Distributions, which is how nearly EVERYONE uses Linux, are free to
>> include zfs on their own.  All the major distributions already patch
>> the kernel heavily.
>>
>>
> FreeBSD has nowhere near the installed base  of Linux.  There is also
> absolutely 0 "Enterprise" support for FreeBSD.  ZFS will not
change that.
>  It is not a threat to Oracle.
What I don''t understand is why Linux is a threat to Oracle then.
Oracle runs on both Linux and Solaris.  The market for ZFS-backed
disk arrays is small, and again, that genie is already out of the
bottle anyway.

Have you dealt with RedHat "Enterprise" support?  lol.

The "enterprise" is going to continue to want Oracle on Solaris.

Miles Nordin <carton at Ivy.NET> wrote:
> >>>>> "gd" == Garrett D''Amore <garrett
at nexenta.com> writes:
>
>      >> Joerg is correct that CDDL code can legally live right
>      >> alongside the GPLv2 kernel code and run in the same program.
>
>     gd> My understanding is that no, this is not possible.
>
> GPLv2 and CDDL are incompatible:
>
> 
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/education/licenses/index_html/#GPLIncompatibleLicenses
This URL contains a claim from a laymen - not a lawyer. It is based on a 
questionable generalization and it lacks a legal proof.

The GPL in fact is "incompatible" with any license but "public
domain" and the
latter license is not permitted in many jurisdictions (such as Europe).

The GPL mentions something called a "derivative work". Such a work is
created
if _you_ by your own make changes to an existing program. As you are the author
of these changes, you have the permission to put it under GPL as the GPL 
requires.

Unfortunately, the FSF likes to convince you that the only legal way to make 
any change to a GPLd program is by creating a so called "derivative
work".
This however cannot be done for several reasons:

1) You would need to declare other peoples code that you add to a GPLd work to 
be your own changes, but this is in conflict with the Copyright law.

2) The GPL itself is in conflct with the US Copyright law, see:
	http://www.osscc.net/en/gpl.html
The papers from the lawyers Lawrence Rosen, Tom Gordon and Lothar Determan
explain why a license like the GPL is in conflict with US Copyright law title
17 section 106:
	http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106
when it tries to redefine the law definition of a "derivative work".

Lawrence Rosen is the previous legal counselor of the OpenSource Initiative.
Tom Gordon is a US Lawyer living in Berlin and working three rooms to my left.
Lothar Determan is a professor of law at the Freie Universit?t Berlin and at
the University of San Francisco. BTW: 30% of the text from Lothar Determan is 
legal proof and quotes.

3) All lawyers I am aware of that did publish reviews on the GPL confirm that
the only way to combine code from independent works is to create a so called
"collective work". This is even confirmed by the FSF friendly German
lawyers
(for the special case of a new filesystem for Linux) that wrote the book
"Die
GPL kommentiert und erkl?rt" and that work for Harald Welte
(gplviolations.org).

> however Linus''s ``interpretation'''' of the GPL
considers that ''insmod''
> is ``mere aggregation'''' and not
``linking'''', but subject to rules of
> ``bad taste''''.  Although this may sound ridiculous, there
are blob
> drivers for wireless chips, video cards, and storage controllers
> relying on this ``interpretation'''' for over a decade.  I
think a ZFS
> porting project could do the same and end up emitting the same warning
> about a ``tained'''' kernel that proprietary modules do:
Linus is right with his primary decision, but this also applies for static 
linking. See Lawrence Rosen for more information, the GPL does not distinct 
between static and dynamic linking. 

>  http://lwn.net/Articles/147070/
A nice quote that explains the way Moglen acts in the public. His claims do not 
contain a single legal proof. He still only made vague intimations that leave 
it open whether Linus is right or not. Moglen is a politician, he tries to get 
to a certain point he likes to reach and he does not include the current legal 
situation in his talks. Take this interview as what it is: a political 
statement but no legal claim.

People should be careful when listening to Moglen as he e.g. claims that people 
can rightfully relicense a BSDld piece of code under GPL (without giving a legal
proof as usual...). Let us check the legal situation:

Changing the license is a privileged act reserved to the Copyright owner. 
Unless you have an explicit permission to do so, you can''t. The BSDl
does not
contain such an explicit permission, so you cannot change the license of other 
peoples work distributed under BSDl.

Changing the license would also require the right to sub-license, but the BSDl 
(similar to the GPL) does not give this right away. As a result, every user 
always gets his permissions directly from the original copyright holder who put 
the code under BSDl.

Given this background, even the BSDld drivers in Linux can only be legally used 
by Linux if they form a "collective work" that is clearly permitted by
the GPL.
The same would apply to a CDDLd driver in Linux.

And BTW: Moglen did even confirm to me in a private mail that the claims about
GPL/BSD and GPL/CDDL compatibility on the FSF website are wrong. As he did not 
repeat this in the public, this proves the politician...
> the quickest link I found of Linus actually speaking about his
> ``interpretation'''', his thoughts are IMHO completely
muddled (which
> might be intentional):
>
>  http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/12/3/228
Nice to see that Linus seems to know the legal background ;-)

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

On Wed, 18 Aug 2010, Joerg Schilling wrote:
>
> Linus is right with his primary decision, but this also applies for static
> linking. See Lawrence Rosen for more information, the GPL does not distinct
> between static and dynamic linking.
GPLv2 does not address linking at all and only makes vague references 
to the "program".  There is no insinuation that the program needs to 
occupy a single address space or mention of address spaces at all. 
The "program" could potentially be a composition of multiple 
cooperating executables (e.g. like GCC) or multiple modules.  As you 
say, everything depends on the definition of a "derived work".

If a shell script may be dependent on GNU ''cat'', does that
make the
shell script a "derived work"?  Note that GNU ''cat''
could be replaced
with some other ''cat'' since ''cat'' has a well
defined interface.  A
very similar situation exists for loadable modules which have well 
defined interfaces (like ''cat'').  Based on the argument used
for
''cat'', the mere injection of a loadable module into an
execution
environment which includes GPL components should not require that 
module to be distributable under GPL.  The module only needs to be 
distributable under GPL if it was developed in such a way that it 
specifically depends on GPL components.

Bob
-- 
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/

Frank wrote:
> Have you dealt with RedHat "Enterprise" support?  lol.
Have you dealt with Sun/Oracle support lately? lololol  It''s a
disaster.
We''ve had a failed disk in a fully support Sun system for over 3 weeks,
Explorer data turned in, and been given the runaround forever.  The 7000
series support is no better, possibly worse.
> The "enterprise" is going to continue to want Oracle on Solaris.
The "enterprise" wants what they used to get from Sun, not
what''s
currently being offered.

Ethan

All of this is entirely legal conjecture, by people who aren''t lawyers,
for issues that have not been tested by court and are clearly subject to
interpretation.  Since it no longer is relevant to the topic of the
list, can we please either take the discussion offline, or agree to just
let the topic die (on the basis that there cannot be an authoritative
answer until there is some case law upon which to base it?)

	- Garrett


On Wed, 2010-08-18 at 09:43 -0500, Bob Friesenhahn
wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Aug 2010, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> >
> > Linus is right with his primary decision, but this also applies for
static
> > linking. See Lawrence Rosen for more information, the GPL does not
distinct
> > between static and dynamic linking.
> 
> GPLv2 does not address linking at all and only makes vague references 
> to the "program".  There is no insinuation that the program needs
to
> occupy a single address space or mention of address spaces at all. 
> The "program" could potentially be a composition of multiple 
> cooperating executables (e.g. like GCC) or multiple modules.  As you 
> say, everything depends on the definition of a "derived work".
> 
> If a shell script may be dependent on GNU ''cat'', does
that make the
> shell script a "derived work"?  Note that GNU
''cat'' could be replaced
> with some other ''cat'' since ''cat'' has a
well defined interface.  A
> very similar situation exists for loadable modules which have well 
> defined interfaces (like ''cat'').  Based on the argument
used for
> ''cat'', the mere injection of a loadable module into an
execution
> environment which includes GPL components should not require that 
> module to be distributable under GPL.  The module only needs to be 
> distributable under GPL if it was developed in such a way that it 
> specifically depends on GPL components.
> 
> Bob

> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Ethan Erchinger
> 
> We''ve had a failed disk in a fully support Sun system for over 3
weeks,
> Explorer data turned in, and been given the runaround forever.  The
> 7000
> series support is no better, possibly worse.
That is really weird.  What are you calling "failed?"  If
you''re getting
either a red blinking light, or a checksum failure on a device in a zpool...
You should get your replacement with no trouble.

I have had wonderful support, up to and including recently, on my Sun
hardware.

> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Garrett D''Amore
> 
> interpretation.  Since it no longer is relevant to the topic of the
> list, can we please either take the discussion offline, or agree to
> just
> let the topic die (on the basis that there cannot be an authoritative
> answer until there is some case law upon which to base it?)
Compatibility of ZFS & Linux, as well as the future development of ZFS, and
the health and future of opensolaris / solaris, oracle & sun ... Are
definitely relevant to this list.

People are allowed to conjecture.

If you don''t have interest in a thread, just ignore the thread.

Edward wrote:
> That is really weird.  What are you calling "failed?"  If
you''re
getting
> either a red blinking light, or a checksum failure on a device in a
zpool...
> You should get your replacement with no trouble.
Yes, failed, with all the normal "failed" signs, cfgadm not finding
it,
"FAULTED" in zpool output.
> I have had wonderful support, up to and including recently, on my Sun
> hardware.
I wish we had the same luck.  We''ve been handed off between 3 different
"technicians" at this point, each one asking for the same information.

"Garrett D''Amore" <garrett at nexenta.com> wrote:
> All of this is entirely legal conjecture, by people who aren''t
lawyers,
> for issues that have not been tested by court and are clearly subject to
> interpretation.  Since it no longer is relevant to the topic of the
> list, can we please either take the discussion offline, or agree to just
> let the topic die (on the basis that there cannot be an authoritative
> answer until there is some case law upon which to base it?)
Garret, I did reply to your mail because you quoted claims from people who 
aren''t lawyers and who do not give evidence for their claims.

As I know that is makes no sense to discuss claims from non-lawyers, I replied
with quotes and statements I did read from lawyers.

I am no lawyer, but I talk with lawyers on Copyright and licensing issues and 
I try to ignore legal claims from anybody who does not give evidence for his 
claims. 

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

On 8/18/10 9:29 AM -0700 Ethan Erchinger wrote:
> Edward wrote:
>> I have had wonderful support, up to and including recently, on my Sun
>> hardware.
>
> I wish we had the same luck.  We''ve been handed off between 3
different
> "technicians" at this point, each one asking for the same
information.
Do they at least phrase it as "Can you verify the problem?", the way
that call center operators ask you for the information you''ve already
entered via the automated attendant? :)

+1: This thread is relevant and productive discourse that''ll assist 
OpenSolaris orphans in pending migration choices.

On 08/18/10 12:27, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
> Compatibility of ZFS&  Linux, as well as the future development of ZFS,
and
> the health and future of opensolaris / solaris, oracle&  sun ... Are
> definitely relevant to this list.
>
> People are allowed to conjecture.
>
> If you don''t have interest in a thread, just ignore the thread.

On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 11:44 AM, Ethan Erchinger <ethan at plaxo.com>
wrote:
>
> Frank wrote:
>> Have you dealt with RedHat "Enterprise" support? ?lol.
>
> Have you dealt with Sun/Oracle support lately? lololol ?It''s a
disaster.
> We''ve had a failed disk in a fully support Sun system for over 3
weeks,
> Explorer data turned in, and been given the runaround forever. ?The 7000
> series support is no better, possibly worse.
We have seen virtually no degradation of Sun (Oracle) Support since
the takeover. Sun started enforcing the requirement of system serial
number before Oracle completed the acquisition, and that is the last
major change we''ve seen. On the other hand, much of our experience is
related to our local support staff, and they were well above Sun
average for over a decade.
>> The "enterprise" is going to continue to want Oracle on
Solaris.
>
> The "enterprise" wants what they used to get from Sun, not
what''s
> currently being offered.
-- 
{--------1---------2---------3---------4---------5---------6---------7---------}
Paul Kraus
-> Senior Systems Architect, Garnet River ( http://www.garnetriver.com/ )
-> Sound Coordinator, Schenectady Light Opera Company (
http://www.sloctheater.org/ )
-> Technical Advisor, RPI Players

>>>>> "ee" == Ethan Erchinger <ethan at
plaxo.com> writes:
    ee> We''ve had a failed disk in a fully support Sun system for
over
    ee> 3 weeks, Explorer data turned in, and been given the runaround
    ee> forever.

that sucks.  

but while NetApp may replace your disk immediately, they are an
abusive partner with their CEO waving his cock around on mailing lists
presuming to ban all resale claiming first-sale doctrine does not
apply to his magical ONTap software.  All their documentation is
locked up behind a paywall, and they entice all their mouth-breather
JFDI bank sysadmins to do their discussion of the product on the
login-walled vendor-censored NOW forums.

My choice would always be for the company that gives the option of not
paying for support without their detonating some self-destructing
DRMblob and destroying my entire business.  No matter how bad their
support is when I choose to pay for it, I would always buy from them.
Companies that try to make money by sticking a wrench into the gears
of the market are necktie-strangled scammers and, I think, not a good
fit for highly-technical customers.  It just doesn''t pay in the long
run, though if I''m honest I suppose the stories I''ve heard
about
ditching NetApp are about scaling problems as often as they are about
abusive-relationship problems.
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On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Miles Nordin <carton at ivy.net> wrote:
> >>>>> "ee" == Ethan Erchinger <ethan at
plaxo.com> writes:
>
>    ee> We''ve had a failed disk in a fully support Sun system
for over
>    ee> 3 weeks, Explorer data turned in, and been given the runaround
>    ee> forever.
>
> that sucks.
>
> but while NetApp may replace your disk immediately, they are an
> abusive partner with their CEO waving his cock around on mailing lists
> presuming to ban all resale claiming first-sale doctrine does not
> apply to his magical ONTap software.  All their documentation is
> locked up behind a paywall, and they entice all their mouth-breather
> JFDI bank sysadmins to do their discussion of the product on the
> login-walled vendor-censored NOW forums.
>
>
> My choice would always be for the company that gives the option of not
> paying for support without their detonating some self-destructing
> DRMblob and destroying my entire business.  No matter how bad their
> support is when I choose to pay for it, I would always buy from them.
> Companies that try to make money by sticking a wrench into the gears
> of the market are necktie-strangled scammers and, I think, not a good
> fit for highly-technical customers.  It just doesn''t pay in the
long
> run, though if I''m honest I suppose the stories I''ve
heard about
> ditching NetApp are about scaling problems as often as they are about
> abusive-relationship problems.
>
>
Holy uncalled-for FUD filled rant batman!  Great, we all see you hate
NetApp.  Not sure why you felt the need to interject it here.

PS: First sale doesn''t apply, it''s already held-up in a court
of law, and
Hitz isn''t their CEO.  See:  *Davidson & Associates v. Internet
Gateway Inc
(2004)<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Davidson_%26_Associates_v._Internet_Gateway_Inc_(2004)&action=edit&redlink=1>
*

--Tim
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On 08/19/10 03:44 AM, Ethan Erchinger wrote:
> Have you dealt with Sun/Oracle support lately? lololol  It''s a
disaster.
> We''ve had a failed disk in a fully support Sun system for over 3
weeks,
> Explorer data turned in, and been given the runaround forever.  The 7000
> series support is no better, possibly worse.
>
>    
If you count Monday this week as lately, we have never had to wait more 
than 24 hours for replacement drives for our 45x0 or 7000 series 
systems.  Even if the drive has only degraded by checksum errors, they 
still ship a replacement.

-- 
Ian.

In message <4C6C4E30.7060801 at ianshome.com>, Ian Collins
writes:
>If you count Monday this week as lately, we have never had to wait more 
>than 24 hours for replacement drives for our 45x0 or 7000 series 
Same here, but two weeks ago for a failed drive in an X4150.

Last week SunSolve was sending my service order requests to
/dev/null, but someone manually entered after I submitted
web feedback.

John
groenveld at acm.org

On Aug 18, 2010, at 10:43 AM, Bob Friesenhahn <bfriesen at
simple.dallas.tx.us> wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Aug 2010, Joerg Schilling wrote:
>> 
>> Linus is right with his primary decision, but this also applies for
static
>> linking. See Lawrence Rosen for more information, the GPL does not
distinct
>> between static and dynamic linking.
> 
> GPLv2 does not address linking at all and only makes vague references to
the "program".  There is no insinuation that the program needs to
occupy a single address space or mention of address spaces at all. The
"program" could potentially be a composition of multiple cooperating
executables (e.g. like GCC) or multiple modules.  As you say, everything depends
on the definition of a "derived work".
> 
> If a shell script may be dependent on GNU ''cat'', does
that make the shell script a "derived work"?  Note that GNU
''cat'' could be replaced with some other
''cat'' since ''cat'' has a well defined
interface.  A very similar situation exists for loadable modules which have well
defined interfaces (like ''cat'').  Based on the argument used
for ''cat'', the mere injection of a loadable module into an
execution environment which includes GPL components should not require that
module to be distributable under GPL.  The module only needs to be distributable
under GPL if it was developed in such a way that it specifically depends on GPL
components.
This is how I see it as well.

The big problem is not the insmod''ing of the blob but how it is
distributed.

As far as I know this can be circumvented by not including it in the main
distribution but through a separate repo to be installed afterwards, ala Debian
non-free.

-Ross

Ross Walker wrote:
> On Aug 18, 2010, at 10:43 AM, Bob Friesenhahn <bfriesen at
simple.dallas.tx.us> wrote:
>
>   
>> On Wed, 18 Aug 2010, Joerg Schilling wrote:
>>     
>>> Linus is right with his primary decision, but this also applies for
static
>>> linking. See Lawrence Rosen for more information, the GPL does not
distinct
>>> between static and dynamic linking.
>>>       
>> GPLv2 does not address linking at all and only makes vague references
to the "program".  There is no insinuation that the program needs to
occupy a single address space or mention of address spaces at all. The
"program" could potentially be a composition of multiple cooperating
executables (e.g. like GCC) or multiple modules.  As you say, everything depends
on the definition of a "derived work".
>>
>> If a shell script may be dependent on GNU ''cat'', does
that make the shell script a "derived work"?  Note that GNU
''cat'' could be replaced with some other
''cat'' since ''cat'' has a well defined
interface.  A very similar situation exists for loadable modules which have well
defined interfaces (like ''cat'').  Based on the argument used
for ''cat'', the mere injection of a loadable module into an
execution environment which includes GPL components should not require that
module to be distributable under GPL.  The module only needs to be distributable
under GPL if it was developed in such a way that it specifically depends on GPL
components.
>>     
>
> This is how I see it as well.
>
> The big problem is not the insmod''ing of the blob but how it is
distributed.
>
> As far as I know this can be circumvented by not including it in the main
distribution but through a separate repo to be installed afterwards, ala Debian
non-free.
>
> -Ross
>   
Various distros do the same thing with patent/license encumbered and 
binary-only pieces like some device drivers, applications, and 
multimedia codecs and playback components.  If a user wants that piece 
they click ''yes I still want it''.
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Ross Walker <rswwalker at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If a shell script may be dependent on GNU ''cat'',
does that make the shell script a "derived work"?  Note that GNU
''cat'' could be replaced with some other
''cat'' since ''cat'' has a well defined
interface.  A very similar situation exists for loadable modules which have well
defined interfaces (like ''cat'').  Based on the argument used
for ''cat'', the mere injection of a loadable module into an
execution environment which includes GPL components should not require that
module to be distributable under GPL.  The module only needs to be distributable
under GPL if it was developed in such a way that it specifically depends on GPL
components.
>
> This is how I see it as well.
>
> The big problem is not the insmod''ing of the blob but how it is
distributed.
>
> As far as I know this can be circumvented by not including it in the main
distribution but through a separate repo to be installed afterwards, ala Debian
non-free.
I''ve seen these arguments over and over but they are wrong.

1) The OpenSource definition http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php 
section 9 makes it very clear that an OSS license must not restrict other 
software and must not prevent to bundle different works under different 
licenses on one medium.

2) given the fact that the GPL is an aproved OSS licensse, it obviously 
complies with the OSS definition.

3) as a result, any GPL interpretation that is based on the assumption that a 
separate distribution would fix problems is wrong.

There is a simple rule:

-	If you modify a GPLd work by your own, so that all you add was written
	by you for this modification only, then you created a "derivative
work"
	and you need to put your modifications under GPL.

-	If you add another independent work to a GPLd work, you create a so 
	called "collective work". This is permitted by the GPL. In this case,
	the GPL only applies to the GPLd part and the license for the other 
	work applies to the other work. You need to respect the sum of all
	claims from all licenses in this case. Such a collective work can only
	be distributed if the claims from the licenses are not contradicting.
	If one license e.g. permits redistribution on Mondays only and the
	other permits redistribution on Wednesdays only, you cannot publish
	the collective work.

	ZFS is an independent work with respect to the Linx kernel. It was not
	written for or with the Linux kernel.

-	If like to you add ZFS to the Linux kernel, you first need to create a
	derivative work from ZFS and another derivative work from the Linux 
	kernel in order to allow both to work together. You later create a
	collective work from the combination of the derivative works mentioned
	before. The modification in the ZFS code (in case they appear in 
	files that come with ZFS) need to be put under CDDL, the modifications
	in the Linux kernel need to be put under GPL.

Note: the GPLv3 tries to disallow most collective works, so be careful with 
GPLv3.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Joerg Schilling
> 
> 1) The OpenSource definition
> http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
> section 9 makes it very clear that an OSS license must not restrict
> other
> software and must not prevent to bundle different works under different
> licenses on one medium.
> 
> 2) given the fact that the GPL is an aproved OSS licensse, it obviously
> complies with the OSS definition.
Even if there is a compatibility problem between GPL and ZFS, it''s all
but
irrelevant.  Because the linux kernel can load modules which aren''t
required
to be GPL.  If they''re compiled as modules, separately from the kernel,
then
there''s no argument over "derived work" or anything like that
...

All you would need is a /boot partition, where the kernel is able to load
the ZFS modules, and then you''re home free.  Much as we do today, with
grub
loading solaris kernel, and then the solaris kernel using the bootfs
property to determine which ZFS filesystem to mount as /

So even if there is a license compatibility problem, I think it''s all
but
irrelevant.  Because it''s easily legally solvable, or avoidable.

The reasons for ZFS not in Linux must be more than just the license issue.

"Edward Ned Harvey" <shill at nedharvey.com> wrote:
> The reasons for ZFS not in Linux must be more than just the license issue.
If Linux has ZFS, then it would be possible to do 

-	I/O performance analysis based on the same FS implementation

-	stability analysis for data, crashes, ...

and a lot more. It may be that the Linux people are in fear of becoming 
comparable.



J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

Apparently, I must not be using the right web form...
I would update the case sometimes via the web, and it seems like no one 
actually saw it. Or, some other engineer comes along and asks me the 
same set of questions that were already answered (and recorded in the 
case records!).

Another story. I had a bad DIMM in an X4240. The support tech was almost 
dismissive that we had a bad DIMM. Provided him with explorer outputs, 
IPMI outputs, reseated the DIMM, rebooted, etc. Didn''t hear from him
for
like a week. I complained. He said I forgot to give him the full output 
of "prtdiag -v" to verify the size of each DIMM... as if you
can''t tell
by the explorer file. Silence for another week, I complained again, then 
I heard from the parts department that the part was being shipped. Not 
exactly friendly support.

When it was just Sun, their support was pretty good. Around the time it 
was announced that Oracle was going to acquire Sun, Sun''s support just 
went south. I wouldn''t recommend Sun servers on the basis of the
quality
of the support I''ve been getting.

-Paul

On 8/18/10 2:39 PM, John D Groenveld wrote:
> In message<4C6C4E30.7060801 at ianshome.com>, Ian Collins writes:
>> If you count Monday this week as lately, we have never had to wait more
>> than 24 hours for replacement drives for our 45x0 or 7000 series
> Same here, but two weeks ago for a failed drive in an X4150.
>
> Last week SunSolve was sending my service order requests to
> /dev/null, but someone manually entered after I submitted
> web feedback.
>
> John
> groenveld at acm.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
>

On Aug 19, 2010, at 9:26 AM, Joerg.Schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (Joerg
Schilling) wrote:
> "Edward Ned Harvey" <shill at nedharvey.com> wrote:
> 
>> The reasons for ZFS not in Linux must be more than just the license
issue.
> 
> If Linux has ZFS, then it would be possible to do 
> 
> -    I/O performance analysis based on the same FS implementation
> 
> -    stability analysis for data, crashes, ...
> 
> and a lot more. It may be that the Linux people are in fear of becoming 
> comparable.
I really think that with ZFS on Linux implemented using the block layer instead
of the VFS layer (which would need work to support it and thus kernel adoption
for that work) would provide comparable performance to FreeBSD/Solaris on
comparable hardware.

This means a lot more work on the port as it will need to write a lot of the
routines that used to be handled by the OS'' VFS layer to the
lower-level block layer, but this would assure both reliability and performance.

-Ross

On 8/19/10 10:48 AM +0200 Joerg Schilling wrote:
> 1) The OpenSource definition
> http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php  section 9 makes it very
> clear that an OSS license must not restrict other  software and must not
> prevent to bundle different works under different  licenses on one medium.
>
> 2) given the fact that the GPL is an aproved OSS licensse, it obviously
> complies with the OSS definition.
>
> 3) as a result, any GPL interpretation that is based on the assumption
> that a  separate distribution would fix problems is wrong.
I don''t disagree with you, but 1&2 do not lead to 3.  1 does not
even
necessarily lead to 2.

OSI/OSS is not definitive.  A license is not open source because of
its approval by OSI and it is not not-open source because of its
absence in OSI.  For licenses that are approved, it''s still possible
that OSI made a mistake (because licenses are complicated things
after all).

You cannot depend on OSI, which has no legal standing, to back up any
claim of what a given license must or must not support.  In absence
of case law, the only definitive measure of a license is the license
itself.

Even what the FSF may say about the GPL isn''t necessarily the case.

In (3) you are talking about a GPL interpretation and trying to say
something definitive about it based on what is just someone else''s
(OSI''s) interpretation.

Frank Cusack <frank+lists/zfs at linetwo.net> wrote:
> On 8/19/10 10:48 AM +0200 Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > 1) The OpenSource definition
> > http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php  section 9 makes it very
> > clear that an OSS license must not restrict other  software and must
not
> > prevent to bundle different works under different  licenses on one
medium.
> >
> > 2) given the fact that the GPL is an aproved OSS licensse, it
obviously
> > complies with the OSS definition.
> >
> > 3) as a result, any GPL interpretation that is based on the assumption
> > that a  separate distribution would fix problems is wrong.
>
> I don''t disagree with you, but 1&2 do not lead to 3.  1 does
not even
> necessarily lead to 2.
>
> OSI/OSS is not definitive.  A license is not open source because of
> its approval by OSI and it is not not-open source because of its
> absence in OSI.  For licenses that are approved, it''s still
possible
> that OSI made a mistake (because licenses are complicated things
> after all).
Well, the GPL was marked as non OSI compliant some time ago. The GPL received 
it''s status of an OSI compliant license after the FSF send a note to 
OpenSource.org that the GPL has to be interpreted in a way that makes it OSI 
compliant. If you take this into account, my conclusions apply.

Unfortunately, the mail archives from the OSI go only back for two years, so 
this is not easily provable.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily