Backing up sparse files ... VM's and TrueCrypt ... etc

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> On Feb 20, 2010, at 9:21 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
> >
> > Recently, a few months ago, I saw two articles released within a day
> of each
> > other.  Apple gave up on ZFS in OSX because of irreconcilable license
> > issues.  And KQ Infotech is working on a port of zfs to Linux, with
> reason
> > to believe they can, or have already overcome the license conflict
> issues.
> 
> Built as a standalone module.  But it's a lose in the long run, in my
> opinion. What the world needs most from ZFS is portability across
> different operating systems.  The terms of the CDDL ensure that cannot
> happen.

The terms of the Linux, solaris, and windows kernels are all mutually
exclusive.  You can't take any code from one and build it into any other.
So how can you get the portability across OSes?

For one, they could build a loadable standalone module, which loads into
kernel but isn't distributed with the kernel, and isn't built as part of the
kernel.  It's got an interface that the kernel can use ... and it can run in
kernel space instead of user space ... and eliminates the conflict of
license agreements.

As long as it loads into the kernel, what's the problem?