A recent discussion on the lkml examined the possibility of a Linux implementation of Sun's ZFS. It was pointed out that the file system is released under the GPL-incompatible CDDL, and that Sun has filed numerous patents to prevent ZFS from being reverse engineered. Max Yudin pointed out, "according to Jeff Bonwick's blog Sun issued 56 patents on ZFS, but I have no idea what they patented. Sorry, binary compatible ZFS reimplementation with GPL license might not be legal."
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Member since:2005-11-23
Member since:2005-07-24
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Hehe, owned by their licence.
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Well. I'm a Linux advocate. And I am partial to the GPL, despite what a pain in the ass it can, at times, be.
BUT... I can agree that it is a good thing for GPL advocates to occasionally get hoist by their own petard.
There is a lot of unfairness going on in the form of "we can take your code but you can't take ours" and it is mostly in the direction of BSD Project -> GPL Project.
You can actually substitute many permissive licenses for "BSD" in the statement above.
It's good for GPL advocates to, at least occasionally, see that the GPL has thorns as well as teeth.
It is the inflexible nature of the GPL, more than the terms of the CDDL, that are denying Linux ZFS.
Then again, by Linux standards, ZFS is, in Andrew Morton's words, a "rampant layering violation".
Beyond the licensing issues, I think we'd be more likely to see Reiser4 merged than ZFS, without some major philosophical reworking of the design.
Edited 2007-04-20 22:18
Member since:2006-02-06
How is it that Mac OS X and FreeBSD overcame the patents problem ? Wouldn't it be possible for Linux to do things the same way ?
Do they use binary compatible reimplementations of the FS ? If so I guess they're all in the same ship with those patents problems.
(I really doesn't know much about ZFS history and implementations, so please excuse if the answers to those questions are obvious).
Member since:2006-11-05
They both use Sun's code. Presumably Apple worked something out with them, and the 2-clause BSD license is not incompatible with the CDDL, so there's no problem with FreeBSD. The issue with Linux is that Sun's license and Linux's are both restrictive, but in different ways. Mixing Sun's work with more permissively licensed code is not a problem.
Member since:
2005-07-11
*and* will be available for multiple OSes including Linux, Mac OS X and BSD UNIX.
It will be available on MacOS X (will be part of Leopard), and is already available on FreeBSD -CURRENT (will be part of 7.0).
Linux is the only one not in the ZFS party.