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The article talks about repeating mistakes, and descends into the world of file systems, but I didn't quite understand what the problem is that is repeated ther

The article talks about repeating mistakes, and descends into the world of file systems, but I didn't quite understand what the problem is that is repeated there. Anybody care to explain? (FWIW my impression is that there's lots of reinventing going on in the open source FS development; everybody wants to reinvent the cool features from ZFS, but with improved performance or a slightly different architecture, and they all seem to be eager to learn from their own and other people's mistakes).

rbanffy 15y ago
> everybody wants to reinvent the cool features from ZFS, Perhaps because ZFS cannot be integrated into Linux due to licensing issues. If Oracle would be generous enough to offer it under a compatible license, I have little doubt it would be very welcome, despite some of its architectural incompatibilities.
- naner 15y ago
  If Oracle would be generous enough to offer it under a compatible license, I have little doubt it would be very welcome, despite some of its architectural incompatibilities. Oracle is developing Btrfs for Linux, I'm not sure they have any desire to make ZFS more attractive to Linux users. Also, didn't Apple roll out ZFS on OSX and then abandon it? Does anyone know the reasoning behind that? Perhaps ZFS was over-hyped or is only useful in certain scenarios.
  - evilduck 15y ago
    Apple released a ZFS read-only driver. They've never offered support for it as a writable format as far as I'm aware.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    > Does anyone know the reasoning behind that? ZFS truly shines on hardware Apple no longer makes. It's home is on machines attached to several disks and SSDs. Apple's current server offering is a Mac Mini with two hard disks inside it. It's too bad. Time Machine looks like it was made for ZFS snapshots.
scott_s 15y ago
I had the same question. He has no clear thesis. He never says, "The problem with current filesystems is: ___".
mmatants 15y ago
I, for one, thought that he was going to argue against the overall hierarchical FS metaphor. Personally, I wonder what things would be like if the OS provided a key-value store (or some such NoSQL-ish API) as a core service instead.
- srdev 15y ago
  I suspect that you would still have some semblance of built over such a file-system. Hierarchy is useful for organizing data, and I often find myself using keys that allow me to abstract hierarchy in my NoSQL systems. ex: "/foo/bar/0113" -> data
- ori_b 15y ago
  is a hierarchy all that different from a key value store?

rbanffy 15y ago

> everybody wants to reinvent the cool features from ZFS, Perhaps because ZFS cannot be integrated into Linux due to licensing issues. If Oracle would be generous enough to offer it under a compatible license, I have little doubt it would be very welcome, despite some of its architectural incompatibilities.

naner 15y ago
If Oracle would be generous enough to offer it under a compatible license, I have little doubt it would be very welcome, despite some of its architectural incompatibilities. Oracle is developing Btrfs for Linux, I'm not sure they have any desire to make ZFS more attractive to Linux users. Also, didn't Apple roll out ZFS on OSX and then abandon it? Does anyone know the reasoning behind that? Perhaps ZFS was over-hyped or is only useful in certain scenarios.
- evilduck 15y ago
  Apple released a ZFS read-only driver. They've never offered support for it as a writable format as far as I'm aware.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > Does anyone know the reasoning behind that? ZFS truly shines on hardware Apple no longer makes. It's home is on machines attached to several disks and SSDs. Apple's current server offering is a Mac Mini with two hard disks inside it. It's too bad. Time Machine looks like it was made for ZFS snapshots.

scott_s 15y ago

I had the same question. He has no clear thesis. He never says, "The problem with current filesystems is: ___".

mmatants 15y ago

I, for one, thought that he was going to argue against the overall hierarchical FS metaphor. Personally, I wonder what things would be like if the OS provided a key-value store (or some such NoSQL-ish API) as a core service instead.

srdev 15y ago
I suspect that you would still have some semblance of built over such a file-system. Hierarchy is useful for organizing data, and I often find myself using keys that allow me to abstract hierarchy in my NoSQL systems. ex: "/foo/bar/0113" -> data
ori_b 15y ago
is a hierarchy all that different from a key value store?