ZFS woes (was Re: Backing up sparse files ... VM's and TrueCrypt ... etc)

[Richard Pieri]

On Feb 21, 2010, at 9:07 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
> 
> Perhaps this is just semantics, but how can you blame CDDL more than you
> blame GPL or whatever proprietary license MS uses?  They're just water and
> oil.  How can one be more at fault than the other?

Because it isn't the GPL at fault here.  ZFS on OS X was killed because of the CDDL.  No GPL involvement.

> BTRFS and EXT3 are both GPL, and have the same problem.  You won't be able
> to use it on any OS other than Linux, unless you do it in user space.

That's not how it works.  And for the record, ext2 and ext3 are in FreeBSD's kernel space.

> I don't think you're getting what I'm saying.  Let me repeat:  "As long as
> it loads into the kernel, what's the problem?"  And then your response is
> "ZFS not being in the kernel is a losing proposition."  Point is:  Yes, it's
> able to run in kernel space, without causing legality conflicts.

The problem is that every time I do a kernel upgrade I also have to go and recompile my filesystem modules.  I for one have better things to with my time and stress than worry about whether or not ZFS's maintainers are keeping up with the Linux kernel maintainers.  Not in the stock kernel?  Not on my systems.

--Rich P.