10 ms·

Why did Apple abandon efforts to use ZFS? Licensing?

lizknope 8y ago
Lots of theories but it may have been licensing, a possible NetApp patent infringement lawsuit, or maybe they thought they could do better. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/10/apple-abandons-zfs-on-mac-os-x-project-over-licensing-issues/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/10/apple-abandons-zfs-o... https://storagemojo.com/2009/08/31/why-did-apple-drop-zfs/ https://storagemojo.com/2009/08/31/why-did-apple-drop-zfs/
- gsnedders 8y ago
  There's also the theory that it was Jonathan Schwartz's (Sun's then CEO) "pre-announcement" that led Steve Jobs to throw it all in the bin: > In fact, this week you'll see that Apple is announcing at their Worldwide Developer Conference that ZFS has become the file system in Mac OS 10
  - MBCook 8y ago
    That was the theory I’d always heard, but it seems like such a huge thing to pull last minute out of spite. Some of the other comments about licensing issues make more sense, although that announcement may have been the final straw.
    - mikhailt 8y ago
      If it was one thing, I would agree but Apple/Jobs was known to do this, look at nVidia history as well. The licensing terms wasn't a dealbreaker on its own, both Oracle and Apple could've come up with a different agreement (like Oracle would protect Apple if they were sued) but that announcement was just a massive no-no regardless of how friendly the company is with Apple.
      - MBCook 8y ago
        I know they tended to do this, but ATI was a pretty direct replacement to nVidia, so the Switch wasn’t as big a deal. They’ve certainly done it with other things too. Giving up on ZFS meant they had to stick with the ancient HFS+ and start a VERY long project to make a new FS.
        mikhailt 8y ago
        In the long run, they ended up with their own FS that they can scale from all of their platforms (tvOS, iOS, macOS, watchOS) and pulled it off without any serious issues, which is impressive on its own. It's going to be interesting to see how well they optimize APFS in the following years since the current performance level isn't that much better.
        MBCook 8y ago
        It’s fits their tendency to want to keep everything in house as well. But I would have preferred to have ZFS while they worked on their own FS. And I still want data integrity to protect against bit rot whichever APFS does t provide.
jjoonathan 8y ago
I always assumed it was Oracle buying Sun and Steve Jobs NOPEing far away from the prospect of putting an Oracle filesystem at the heart of their then-largest product. Oracle is really good at using their products as beachheads to vampirize large companies. I hesitate to even imagine what would have happened to Apple had they gone forward with ZFS.
- lern_too_spel 8y ago
  Jobs and Ellison were friends. This is why their companies are so similar in terms of business strategy. https://mashable.com/2013/08/13/larry-ellison-remembers-steve-jobs/ https://mashable.com/2013/08/13/larry-ellison-remembers-stev...
  - pvg 8y ago
    In what ways are their business strategies similar?
    - lern_too_spel 8y ago
      Heavy investment in sales, marketing, and litigation relative to R&D.
      - pvg 8y ago
        That sounds more like a just-so story than some fundamental similarity in overall business approach. And what would a 'heavy investment in litigation' even look like? There's a chart of (absolute) R&D numbers here. https://www.recode.net/2017/9/1/16236506/tech-amazon-apple-gdp-spending-productivity https://www.recode.net/2017/9/1/16236506/tech-amazon-apple-g...
        lern_too_spel 8y ago
        > That sounds more like a just-so story than some fundamental similarity in overall business approach. And yet both companies' business strategies are primarily known for those things, and both companies spend more of their money on those things relative to R&D than their competitors. > what would a 'heavy investment in litigation' even look like Like this: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jan/23/steve-jobs-apple-palm-tech-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jan/23/steve-job... The fact that Jobs would even threaten such a thing shows how similar he is to Ellison. The only reason he backed down was that Palm would have taken Apple to the cleaners in the countersuits.
rsynnott 8y ago
I imagine they got nervous about the prospect of being dependent on Oracle. They'd be far from the only company to draw away from Sun stuff when Oracle took over.
- xattt 8y ago
  Did Apple not continue to use Oracle software as the backend to iCloud?
  - coldtea 8y ago
    That's not any real dependency as having millions of consumer installations... The have iCloud abstracted and diversified anyway (also uses Azure, AWS, etc).
    - atombender 8y ago
      Apple actually no longer uses Azure. They use AWS (S3) and Google Cloud: https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.....
      - 4ad 8y ago
        Wrong link?
        atombender 8y ago
        No. The section about iCloud says: The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as S3 and Google Cloud Platform. The 2017 version of this document had "Azure" in this list. The 2018 version replaces it with Google Cloud.
        coldtea 8y ago
        Yeah, but it also says "such as", so it might not be exhaustive.
ghaff 8y ago
As others have noted, there were various complications around ZFS that Apple may well have decided introduced too much business risk. It's also the case that, while ZFS was and is a very good server file system, a lot of its capabilities are much more relevant for large servers than they were for a desktop PC or laptop.
- Annatar 8y ago
  This is a perpetuated myth that is patently false: ZFS loves cheap disks was the maxim when ZFS first came out, and with block checksums, explicit flush requests directly to the drive electronics, a setting for keeping redundant file copies on a single disk and self-healing during a resilver, it couldn't be more wrong. ZFS the is ideal filesystem for desktops and laptops running the cheapest, shittiest consumer grade drives. It is the only filesystem / volume manager capable of guaranteeing data integrity on such shitty, unreliable drives like consumer grade drives are.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    What myth? I wrote "a lot of its capabilities are much more relevant for large servers" Which is true. Very large scale, integrated volume management, tiered storage, etc. There are a lot of features on ZFS that either aren't relevant at all or are relevant to a vanishingly small percentage of MacOS users. You're right that ZFS has some nice data integrity features. Apple apparently didn't think those were a sufficiently big deal as a practical matter to offset the other issues.
    - Annatar 8y ago
      "I wrote "a lot of its capabilities are much more relevant for large servers" Which is true." That is a myth. It's simply not the case. What you could argue is that if you solve a problem for servers, it is also solved for consumer grade hardware, but writing a volume manager / filesystem for servers is empathically not what Bill Moore and Jeff Bonwick set out to do. Jeff wanted to solve the problem of data integrity in a filesystem (his own words), not explicitly design a solution relevant for servers. ZFS is perfect for laptops and desktops. See also https://wiki.illumos.org/download/attachments/1146951/zfs_last.pdf https://wiki.illumos.org/download/attachments/1146951/zfs_la... ...if you still have difficulty with the concept of ZFS being perfect for shitty consumer grade drives in desktops and laptops, do this mental exercise: which features of ZFS would make it not be a good fit for a cheap consumer drive?
cryptonector 8y ago
IIRC Apple wanted Sun to indemnify Apple as to patent lawsuits threatened (FUD) by NetApp/
lemoncucumber 8y ago
I worked on Apple’s ZFS port, and it was indeed licensing. Apple’s lawyers took a closer look at the CDDL when we were close to shipping and found some provisions that were unacceptable to them.
- gsnedders 8y ago
  But were acceptable for DTrace?
  - Analemma_ 8y ago
    Different risk assessments. DTrace is a non-critical tool, and a totally standalone one. If it suddenly had to be yanked out of macOS because of licensing issues, there would be gnashing of teeth but life would ultimately go on. The filesystem is a different story: if something happened and it had to be immediately removed, Apple would be up shit creek.
    - gsnedders 8y ago
      It's not totally standalone (it has kernel components, for example), but yes, it's clearly something far easier to suddenly drop.
      - jldugger 8y ago
        I think the point is you can rip the kernel components out, and the (non-Dtrace using dev) user doesn't notice. Whereas removing a filesystem driver leaves users without their data.
      - bangonkeyboard 8y ago
        Mojave drops support for DTrace probes in Instruments, so this process may already have begun.
        tambourine_man 8y ago
        Really? Is there a replacement?

Lots of theories but it may have been licensing, a possible NetApp patent infringement lawsuit, or maybe they thought they could do better. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/10/apple-abandons-zfs-on-mac-os-x-project-over-licensing-issues/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/10/apple-abandons-zfs-o... https://storagemojo.com/2009/08/31/why-did-apple-drop-zfs/ https://storagemojo.com/2009/08/31/why-did-apple-drop-zfs/

gsnedders 8y ago
There's also the theory that it was Jonathan Schwartz's (Sun's then CEO) "pre-announcement" that led Steve Jobs to throw it all in the bin: > In fact, this week you'll see that Apple is announcing at their Worldwide Developer Conference that ZFS has become the file system in Mac OS 10
- MBCook 8y ago
  That was the theory I’d always heard, but it seems like such a huge thing to pull last minute out of spite. Some of the other comments about licensing issues make more sense, although that announcement may have been the final straw.
  - mikhailt 8y ago
    If it was one thing, I would agree but Apple/Jobs was known to do this, look at nVidia history as well. The licensing terms wasn't a dealbreaker on its own, both Oracle and Apple could've come up with a different agreement (like Oracle would protect Apple if they were sued) but that announcement was just a massive no-no regardless of how friendly the company is with Apple.
    - MBCook 8y ago
      I know they tended to do this, but ATI was a pretty direct replacement to nVidia, so the Switch wasn’t as big a deal. They’ve certainly done it with other things too. Giving up on ZFS meant they had to stick with the ancient HFS+ and start a VERY long project to make a new FS.
      - mikhailt 8y ago
        In the long run, they ended up with their own FS that they can scale from all of their platforms (tvOS, iOS, macOS, watchOS) and pulled it off without any serious issues, which is impressive on its own. It's going to be interesting to see how well they optimize APFS in the following years since the current performance level isn't that much better.
        MBCook 8y ago
        It’s fits their tendency to want to keep everything in house as well. But I would have preferred to have ZFS while they worked on their own FS. And I still want data integrity to protect against bit rot whichever APFS does t provide.

jjoonathan 8y ago

I always assumed it was Oracle buying Sun and Steve Jobs NOPEing far away from the prospect of putting an Oracle filesystem at the heart of their then-largest product. Oracle is really good at using their products as beachheads to vampirize large companies. I hesitate to even imagine what would have happened to Apple had they gone forward with ZFS.

lern_too_spel 8y ago
Jobs and Ellison were friends. This is why their companies are so similar in terms of business strategy. https://mashable.com/2013/08/13/larry-ellison-remembers-steve-jobs/ https://mashable.com/2013/08/13/larry-ellison-remembers-stev...
- pvg 8y ago
  In what ways are their business strategies similar?
  - lern_too_spel 8y ago
    Heavy investment in sales, marketing, and litigation relative to R&D.
    - pvg 8y ago
      That sounds more like a just-so story than some fundamental similarity in overall business approach. And what would a 'heavy investment in litigation' even look like? There's a chart of (absolute) R&D numbers here. https://www.recode.net/2017/9/1/16236506/tech-amazon-apple-gdp-spending-productivity https://www.recode.net/2017/9/1/16236506/tech-amazon-apple-g...
      - lern_too_spel 8y ago
        > That sounds more like a just-so story than some fundamental similarity in overall business approach. And yet both companies' business strategies are primarily known for those things, and both companies spend more of their money on those things relative to R&D than their competitors. > what would a 'heavy investment in litigation' even look like Like this: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jan/23/steve-jobs-apple-palm-tech-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jan/23/steve-job... The fact that Jobs would even threaten such a thing shows how similar he is to Ellison. The only reason he backed down was that Palm would have taken Apple to the cleaners in the countersuits.

rsynnott 8y ago

I imagine they got nervous about the prospect of being dependent on Oracle. They'd be far from the only company to draw away from Sun stuff when Oracle took over.

xattt 8y ago
Did Apple not continue to use Oracle software as the backend to iCloud?
- coldtea 8y ago
  That's not any real dependency as having millions of consumer installations... The have iCloud abstracted and diversified anyway (also uses Azure, AWS, etc).
  - atombender 8y ago
    Apple actually no longer uses Azure. They use AWS (S3) and Google Cloud: https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.....
    - 4ad 8y ago
      Wrong link?
      - atombender 8y ago
        No. The section about iCloud says: The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as S3 and Google Cloud Platform. The 2017 version of this document had "Azure" in this list. The 2018 version replaces it with Google Cloud.
        coldtea 8y ago
        Yeah, but it also says "such as", so it might not be exhaustive.

ghaff 8y ago

As others have noted, there were various complications around ZFS that Apple may well have decided introduced too much business risk. It's also the case that, while ZFS was and is a very good server file system, a lot of its capabilities are much more relevant for large servers than they were for a desktop PC or laptop.

Annatar 8y ago
This is a perpetuated myth that is patently false: ZFS loves cheap disks was the maxim when ZFS first came out, and with block checksums, explicit flush requests directly to the drive electronics, a setting for keeping redundant file copies on a single disk and self-healing during a resilver, it couldn't be more wrong. ZFS the is ideal filesystem for desktops and laptops running the cheapest, shittiest consumer grade drives. It is the only filesystem / volume manager capable of guaranteeing data integrity on such shitty, unreliable drives like consumer grade drives are.
- ghaff 8y ago
  What myth? I wrote "a lot of its capabilities are much more relevant for large servers" Which is true. Very large scale, integrated volume management, tiered storage, etc. There are a lot of features on ZFS that either aren't relevant at all or are relevant to a vanishingly small percentage of MacOS users. You're right that ZFS has some nice data integrity features. Apple apparently didn't think those were a sufficiently big deal as a practical matter to offset the other issues.
  - Annatar 8y ago
    "I wrote "a lot of its capabilities are much more relevant for large servers" Which is true." That is a myth. It's simply not the case. What you could argue is that if you solve a problem for servers, it is also solved for consumer grade hardware, but writing a volume manager / filesystem for servers is empathically not what Bill Moore and Jeff Bonwick set out to do. Jeff wanted to solve the problem of data integrity in a filesystem (his own words), not explicitly design a solution relevant for servers. ZFS is perfect for laptops and desktops. See also https://wiki.illumos.org/download/attachments/1146951/zfs_last.pdf https://wiki.illumos.org/download/attachments/1146951/zfs_la... ...if you still have difficulty with the concept of ZFS being perfect for shitty consumer grade drives in desktops and laptops, do this mental exercise: which features of ZFS would make it not be a good fit for a cheap consumer drive?

cryptonector 8y ago

IIRC Apple wanted Sun to indemnify Apple as to patent lawsuits threatened (FUD) by NetApp/

lemoncucumber 8y ago

I worked on Apple’s ZFS port, and it was indeed licensing. Apple’s lawyers took a closer look at the CDDL when we were close to shipping and found some provisions that were unacceptable to them.

gsnedders 8y ago
But were acceptable for DTrace?
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  Different risk assessments. DTrace is a non-critical tool, and a totally standalone one. If it suddenly had to be yanked out of macOS because of licensing issues, there would be gnashing of teeth but life would ultimately go on. The filesystem is a different story: if something happened and it had to be immediately removed, Apple would be up shit creek.
  - gsnedders 8y ago
    It's not totally standalone (it has kernel components, for example), but yes, it's clearly something far easier to suddenly drop.
    - jldugger 8y ago
      I think the point is you can rip the kernel components out, and the (non-Dtrace using dev) user doesn't notice. Whereas removing a filesystem driver leaves users without their data.
    - bangonkeyboard 8y ago
      Mojave drops support for DTrace probes in Instruments, so this process may already have begun.
      - tambourine_man 8y ago
        Really? Is there a replacement?