On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 05:15:35PM -0500, Bryan Horstmann-Allen wrote: > I apologize this is off-topic, but I'm somewhat close to the illumos project > and would like to correct a few things. > > +------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > | On 2013-02-21 22:12:45, Jeremie Le Hen wrote: > | > | > So, long story short, I do not see any option to use ZFS on a free system. > > This is not correct, as Jeremie notes below. Here's some delicious pudding > proof, though. > > https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/tree/master/usr/src/uts/common/fs/zfs > > There is zero reason not to have ZFS in a free system. Consider its inclusion > in FreeBSD. > > (I can't really imagine its inclusion in OpenBSD, though. License arguments > are > incredibly boring, but it just doesn't seem at all likely.)
The problem with licenses is different between FreeBSD/NetBSD/Linux and OpenBSD. FreeBSD uses a extra layer for compatibility with opensolaris and they have support for loadable kernel modules. NetBSD uses a similar approach. ZFS on Linux uses FUSE, I don't know if they also use a extra layer for compatibility with opensolaris. OpenBSD doesn't have support for loadable kernel modules or FUSE, so OpenBSD should include the code inside of the kernel. This is a big difference with FreeBSD/NetBSD/Linux. Also FreeBSD had adapted their kernel for the peculiarities of ZFS. Did you try the first version of FreeBSD with ZFS?. The performance was horrible. Here in the BSD world, we have HAMMER, a good alternative with a license compatible and a reasonable requirements. If ZFS had a license compatible, the problem would be the same of HAMMER, someone should do the job. I think the most of OpenBSD developers already have a to-do big enough > > | There are two versions of ZFS: Oracle's ZFS in Solaris 11 and the other > | ZFS, which is the open-source evolution of the latest ZFS from > | OpenSolaris. This open-source version is mainly developped within > | IllumOS, which can be considered as the OpenSolaris heir and is backed > | by the Nexenta company. Two others companies, Joyent and Delphix, also > | hired former Sun Solaris developers and are putting some efforts in it. > > This is also slightly incorrect. illumos (not IllumOS) is not backed by > Nexenta. illumos is an open source project that Joyent, Delphix and Nexenta > all > contribute to. To date: > > Joyent's major contributions to illumos include ZFS Write I/O Throttle and a > port of the Linux KVM hypervisor. > > Delphix recently upstreams ZFS feature flags, making ZFS versions more > portable. > > Nexenta's contributions tend to come in the form of HBA driver work, as that's > their business model (storage). > > All companies provide bug fixes of various sorts as well. > > The number of non-employee contributors is small, but exists. There is a lot > of > legacy in the build system, so writing code and running builds is somewhat > non-trivial. > > illumos is the core OS and utilities, similar to the OS/NET source > distributions if you're familiar with Solaris development. > > Or like kernel.org, if you like. (The kernel plus other stuff (like ZFS).) > > illumos is what you use to build illumos-based distributions, like SmartOS, > OmniOS, or OpenIndiana. > > | FreeBSD basically pulls the changes from IllumOS regurlarly. A handful > | of bugfixes did go in the other direction though, but not that much. > | IIRC, I've also seen one or two bugfixes committed into FreeBSD that > | came from ZFS On Linux. > > illumos has seen some bug fixes from the FreeBSD folks, as you mention, but > they are primarily a consumer still. (Love seeing ZFS and DTrace on FreeBSD!) > > zfsonlinux is developed by LLNL, and is core to their supercomputing > infrastructure. My experience with it has been pretty solid over the last > year. > > Cheers. > -- > bdha > cyberpunk is dead. long live cyberpunk. -- Juan Francisco Cantero Hurtado http://juanfra.info
