4 ms·

Is ZFS SIMD still hobbled by Linux kernel GPL fundamentalism/militancy (backported to LTS kernels, no less)?

kjeetgill 7y ago
Do you consider anyone with strong beliefs that run counter to your own fundamentalism/militancy? Last I heard, the Linux Kernel was under the GPL and needs to comply with that. Is "follow a contract I opted into" fundamentalism/militancy?
- new_realist 7y ago
  I'm describing a retroactive change that has no technical justification, only political motivation. I have very liberal license preferences, but that move was beyond the pale: a big middle finger to a kernel module which is clearly not a derived work of the Linux kernel.
  - madez 7y ago
    Engineering, technology, and science are deeply political, where politics isn't restricted to governments, parties, or official state systems. Refusal to recognize that doesn't change it. The GPL is a licence that was created by people well-aware of the political significance, and it is the embodiment of certain political intentions in form of a licence. Projects that consciously use it can be expected to act upon those political intentions. Not understanding actions upon those political intentions is rather a sign of not understanding the situation.
- rodgerd 7y ago
  It's certainly peculiar that the person driving efforts to cripple ZFS (which is, let us note, under an opensource license, albeit a GPL-hostile one) seems to be putting tremendous effort into doing it while being completely disinterested in, for example, the entirely proporietary graphics drivers from free software hostile companies such as NVidia.
asn0 7y ago
Are you referring to this ZoL issue https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/8259 https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/8259 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ZFS-On-Linux-5.0-Workaround https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ZFS-On-L... ?
- new_realist 7y ago
  Yep. "My tolerance for ZFS is pretty non-existant." Why do we let emotional children like these have their petty tyrannies?
  - vbezhenar 7y ago
    You can use FreeBSD, they are happy to provide their sources to proprietary projects. Linux uses different license and cares about projects that contribute back, nothing wrong with that.
    - smittywerben 7y ago
      I tried FreeBSD this week; it felt like a tool. > You can use FreeBSD, they are happy to provide I'd stop at that.
  - dmm 7y ago
    What's childish about it? They refactored their code and removed a legacy header in the process. If ZFS was a part of the kernel it would have been fixed as a part of the refactoring. What's going on here is that people on the internet are asking Greg K-H to do extra work and his reply is that he doesn't care to. If anything what is childish is random internet users thinking that they are entitled to Linux dev's time and work.
    - luke0016 7y ago
      > What's going on here is that people on the internet are asking Greg K-H to do extra work and his reply is that he doesn't care to. That really isn't "what's going on here." The "extra work" is changing one or two lines from containing EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL to EXPORT_SYMBOL and possibly moving them to a different place. If you read through the email thread [1] linked in another comment, you'll see something completely different is being argued and discussed. [1] https://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=154689892914091&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=154689892914091&w=2
Nursie 7y ago
It's not linux fundamentalism here - it backdates to Sun who released ZFS under a license that appears to be deliberately designed to make it incompatible with the GPL
- nisa 7y ago
  That was 2005 - 2019 ZoL is a true open-source project
  - detaro 7y ago
    According to their repo, it is still under CDDL, which is said license. That it is an open-source license doesn't mean it is compatible with GPL (if it is appears to still be a hotly debated topic, but the kernel devs have picked one stance)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dflock 7y ago
    Right, but it's still not GPL, it's CDDL, so it can't use GPL'd parts of the Kernel.
  - vbezhenar 7y ago
    There are competing file systems on Linux which are more aligned with Linux goals and much better integrated with kernel. If ZFS won't work very well on Linux, it gives more chances for those alternative file systems (btrfs, bcachefs), so hopefully one day they'll be proper replacements and ZFS won't be needed at all. This is political thing indeed. Anyway you can always patch the kernel. It won't be as easy to install, but e.g. Ubuntu should be able to do so.
    - dmm 7y ago
      So you're saying that Greg K-H is intentionally breaking ZFS in Linux so as to promote btrfs and bcachefs? That's a big accusation. Do you have any evidence?
nisa 7y ago
oh - didn't know about the backport - considering the change in question is really just a few lines and more or less cosmetic it's a political move. This basically makes native ZFS encryption very slow on recent Linux kernels. Sad move.
- pinewurst 7y ago
  It’s been pulled also from 4.19.38 (and beyond) as well as 4.14.120 (and beyond).
  - nisa 7y ago
    Lost a lot of respect for the Linux devs due to this story - this is just stupid fuckery due to hurt egos or whatever. Droping that API in 5.0+ fine - but backporting the removal of the non-GPL API in -stable kernels?
    - blibble 7y ago
      absolutely, at the point they backported an API breaking change to the LTS branch was the point they lost the benefit of the doubt
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
spindle 7y ago
I believe some operating systems have patches to get around this problem? See https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/61076 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/61076 for example.
pizzazzaro 7y ago
Wait, that got backported to LTS kernels?! No wonder my performance testing shows no difference!!! Though I could have sworn the controversy was about __kernel_fpu becoming kernel_fpu - is there another set of git commits I need to find and rollback/reverse engineer on my 4.19 branch? If a patch for zfs shows up in some random github repo that correctly teaches it to use the gpl-only symbols? I hope it makes it into your hands.

Do you consider anyone with strong beliefs that run counter to your own fundamentalism/militancy? Last I heard, the Linux Kernel was under the GPL and needs to comply with that. Is "follow a contract I opted into" fundamentalism/militancy?

new_realist 7y ago
I'm describing a retroactive change that has no technical justification, only political motivation. I have very liberal license preferences, but that move was beyond the pale: a big middle finger to a kernel module which is clearly not a derived work of the Linux kernel.
- madez 7y ago
  Engineering, technology, and science are deeply political, where politics isn't restricted to governments, parties, or official state systems. Refusal to recognize that doesn't change it. The GPL is a licence that was created by people well-aware of the political significance, and it is the embodiment of certain political intentions in form of a licence. Projects that consciously use it can be expected to act upon those political intentions. Not understanding actions upon those political intentions is rather a sign of not understanding the situation.
rodgerd 7y ago
It's certainly peculiar that the person driving efforts to cripple ZFS (which is, let us note, under an opensource license, albeit a GPL-hostile one) seems to be putting tremendous effort into doing it while being completely disinterested in, for example, the entirely proporietary graphics drivers from free software hostile companies such as NVidia.

asn0 7y ago

Are you referring to this ZoL issue https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/8259 https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/8259 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ZFS-On-Linux-5.0-Workaround https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ZFS-On-L... ?

new_realist 7y ago
Yep. "My tolerance for ZFS is pretty non-existant." Why do we let emotional children like these have their petty tyrannies?
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  You can use FreeBSD, they are happy to provide their sources to proprietary projects. Linux uses different license and cares about projects that contribute back, nothing wrong with that.
  - smittywerben 7y ago
    I tried FreeBSD this week; it felt like a tool. > You can use FreeBSD, they are happy to provide I'd stop at that.
- dmm 7y ago
  What's childish about it? They refactored their code and removed a legacy header in the process. If ZFS was a part of the kernel it would have been fixed as a part of the refactoring. What's going on here is that people on the internet are asking Greg K-H to do extra work and his reply is that he doesn't care to. If anything what is childish is random internet users thinking that they are entitled to Linux dev's time and work.
  - luke0016 7y ago
    > What's going on here is that people on the internet are asking Greg K-H to do extra work and his reply is that he doesn't care to. That really isn't "what's going on here." The "extra work" is changing one or two lines from containing EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL to EXPORT_SYMBOL and possibly moving them to a different place. If you read through the email thread [1] linked in another comment, you'll see something completely different is being argued and discussed. [1] https://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=154689892914091&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=154689892914091&w=2

Nursie 7y ago

It's not linux fundamentalism here - it backdates to Sun who released ZFS under a license that appears to be deliberately designed to make it incompatible with the GPL

nisa 7y ago
That was 2005 - 2019 ZoL is a true open-source project
- detaro 7y ago
  According to their repo, it is still under CDDL, which is said license. That it is an open-source license doesn't mean it is compatible with GPL (if it is appears to still be a hotly debated topic, but the kernel devs have picked one stance)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dflock 7y ago
  Right, but it's still not GPL, it's CDDL, so it can't use GPL'd parts of the Kernel.
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  There are competing file systems on Linux which are more aligned with Linux goals and much better integrated with kernel. If ZFS won't work very well on Linux, it gives more chances for those alternative file systems (btrfs, bcachefs), so hopefully one day they'll be proper replacements and ZFS won't be needed at all. This is political thing indeed. Anyway you can always patch the kernel. It won't be as easy to install, but e.g. Ubuntu should be able to do so.
  - dmm 7y ago
    So you're saying that Greg K-H is intentionally breaking ZFS in Linux so as to promote btrfs and bcachefs? That's a big accusation. Do you have any evidence?

nisa 7y ago

oh - didn't know about the backport - considering the change in question is really just a few lines and more or less cosmetic it's a political move. This basically makes native ZFS encryption very slow on recent Linux kernels. Sad move.

pinewurst 7y ago
It’s been pulled also from 4.19.38 (and beyond) as well as 4.14.120 (and beyond).
- nisa 7y ago
  Lost a lot of respect for the Linux devs due to this story - this is just stupid fuckery due to hurt egos or whatever. Droping that API in 5.0+ fine - but backporting the removal of the non-GPL API in -stable kernels?
  - blibble 7y ago
    absolutely, at the point they backported an API breaking change to the LTS branch was the point they lost the benefit of the doubt

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

spindle 7y ago

I believe some operating systems have patches to get around this problem? See https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/61076 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/61076 for example.

pizzazzaro 7y ago

Wait, that got backported to LTS kernels?! No wonder my performance testing shows no difference!!! Though I could have sworn the controversy was about __kernel_fpu becoming kernel_fpu - is there another set of git commits I need to find and rollback/reverse engineer on my 4.19 branch? If a patch for zfs shows up in some random github repo that correctly teaches it to use the gpl-only symbols? I hope it makes it into your hands.