Possible real explanation for the dropping of ZFS

[Nathan]

It's the most plausible thing I've seen yet as an explanation for why
they actually dropped ZFS:

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1416493&cid=29853107

I quoted it below my sig for the lazy:

~ Nathan

"Posting anon, lest someone guess who my sources are.

The long and short of it was, Apple and Sun couldn't come to terms on
the licensing. Sun wanted a lot of money for giving it to Apple under
different terms and the amount they wanted was in the range of "hell,
we could do it ourselves for that".

Add to that, the Oracle buyout and Sun going into management
paralysis, and Apple decided to go it alone.

Apple's CoreOS team includes several of the lead engineers from the
ZFS project (who fled the remnants of Sun in the Schwartz melt-down),
and the architect of the BeFS. I'm expecting Apple to do their own
next-generation file system, probably in the 10.7 timeframe"

[Scott Palmer]

Why did they need it under different license terms than everyone else?

The world does not need all these different filesystems. It would have
been nice to be able to access the same media on multiple platforms
without resorting to the common denominator of FAT32!

Scott

[markm]

> "Posting anon, lest someone guess who my sources are.

Yeah, that's because s/he doesn't have any sources. First of all,
this is mere speculation and guesswork. This AC hasn't got a clue.
Secondly, all the lead ZFS engineers are *still* at Sun and still
working hard on improving the filesystem, so that part of the post is
completely false as well.

[Alex Blewitt]

On 24 Oct 2009, at 11:25, markm wrote:

> Yeah, that's because s/he doesn't have any sources. First of all,
> this is mere speculation and guesswork.

As is the rebuttal.

In any case, it doesn't really matter any more; Apple has dropped ZFS,
and (a) been nice enough to let us know in advance (giving sufficient
time to recreate the repository and wiki, even if not in the most
efficient communication mechanism) and (b) it's not coming back.
Whatever happens with ZFS on OSX going forward is up to us.

Alex

[toby]

Absolutely. I can't see anything believable in it.

[toby]

On Oct 23, 11:24 pm, Nathan <nathan.sto...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It's the most plausible thing I've seen yet  as an explanation for why
> they actually dropped ZFS:

I have the same level of insider knowledge as the pundit you quoted
(i.e. none), but I now agree with others that the existence of the
NetApp lawsuit* is quite sufficient to prevent Apple going forward
with ZFS. Since I had already mentally written off the suit as a loss
for NetApp, I had underestimated its chilling effect here. Apple can't
be certain which way those cards will fall and it's obvious (to me,
now) that they couldn't risk putting this disputed technology at the
heart of future OS X. In this light the decision to walk away and
invest in an alternative makes business sense, if not much technical
sense.

(Especially since the gestation period for filesystems is measured in
years. A 5 year old filesystem is still teething. 10 years is mature.
And many of us store data in filesystems which are 20+ years old.
That's a lot of very necessary shaking-down.)

The legal explanation also explains the sudden and total removal from
Snow Leopard and MacOSForge (when a project dies, it is not usual to
obliterate it completely... unless a perceived liability exists).

* http://www.sun.com/lawsuit/zfs/

[toby]

On Oct 23, 11:24 pm, Nathan <nathan.sto...@gmail.com> wrote:

> It's the most plausible thing I've seen yet  as an explanation for why
> they actually dropped ZFS:
>
> http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1416493&cid=29853107
>
> I quoted it below my sig for the lazy:
>
> ~ Nathan
>
> "Posting anon, lest someone guess who my sources are.
>
> The long and short of it was, Apple and Sun couldn't come to terms on
> the licensing. Sun wanted a lot of money for giving it to Apple under
> different terms and the amount they wanted was in the range of "hell,
> we could do it ourselves for that".

OK, I was wrong. Bonwick has posted to the list confirming this
explanation, more or less.
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/2009-October/033125.html

[Nathan]

On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 8:17 PM, toby <to...@telegraphics.com.au> wrote:
> On Oct 23, 11:24 pm, Nathan <nathan.sto...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's the most plausible thing I've seen yet  as an explanation for why
>> they actually dropped ZFS:
>>
>> http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1416493&cid=29853107
>>
>> I quoted it below my sig for the lazy:
>>
>> ~ Nathan
>>
>> "Posting anon, lest someone guess who my sources are.
>>
>> The long and short of it was, Apple and Sun couldn't come to terms on
>> the licensing. Sun wanted a lot of money for giving it to Apple under
>> different terms and the amount they wanted was in the range of "hell,
>> we could do it ourselves for that".
>
> OK, I was wrong. Bonwick has posted to the list confirming this
> explanation, more or less.
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/2009-October/033125.html

Ah, well that gives me a bit of a sense of closure about it. Thanks
for posting that.

~ Nathan