4 ms·

Which BSD? ;) DragonFly has HAMMER2, and the CDDL doesn't seem to be negatively impacting the development and integration of ZFS in FreeBSD. I too am not a big

Which BSD? ;) DragonFly has HAMMER2, and the CDDL doesn't seem to be negatively impacting the development and integration of ZFS in FreeBSD. I too am not a big fan of the GPL, especially if the text of the license is longer than the program itself. But any filesystem (let alone a modern one) is very much a non-trivial feat of engineering; the author should have the full right to protect their (and their users') interests.

ksec 3y ago
I am just thinking if we could have one decent FS across both BSD and Linux. And it would still be better than CDDL.
- rollcat 3y ago
  If you just want to exchange data on removable media, use ExFAT. What problem are you trying to solve? Different OS's prefer different filesystems, because filesystems tend to be both complicated and heavily opinionated in design and implementation - just like different OS's. Linux is the odd one by supporting several dozen, all the other OS's stick to 1 or 2 (usually "old" and "new" like HFS+/APFS, FAT/NTFS, etc), plus UDF&FAT as the lowest common denominator for data interchange. There is very little precedent / use cases for sharing volumes like you suggest: non-removable disks tend to stay in one machine for their lifetime; dual-booting is extremely niche (where Linux/BSD themselves are all niche) and mostly a domain of enthusiasts.
  - klardotsh 3y ago
    Sure, but something as mundane as licensing being the reason we can't even try is kinda depressing. One ZFS-grade filesystem that could have Windows, Linux, and BSD implementations, allowing robust external storage with all the promises of modern snapshotting filesystems? Ah. What a dream. Maybe in 10-20 years if someone white-rooms a bcachefs or ZFS implementation, I guess.
    - rollcat 3y ago
      Again, CDDL is effectively "free enough" (it's basically a fork of MPL/weak copyleft) that both FreeBSD and Linux (although not mainline) incorporate ZFS. Whether it can be mixed with GPL is a very good question, the facts are that 1. it wasn't the intention for it to be incompatible, 2. it was never tested in court, 3. several popular distros nowadays ship the spl.ko & zfs.ko binaries. I recommend this talk by Bryan Cantrill, which provides more context on the whole licensing story for Solaris: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1375s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1375s> TL;DW: lots of effort and good will was put into making this code as free as possible, with the intention of making it broadly usable. There are other reasons why e.g. OpenBSD won't adopt ZFS, the main one being the sheer complexity: <https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/ZFS-on-OpenBSD https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/ZFS-on-OpenBSD>. Again, different projects, different goals. Apple heavily considered ZFS (even advertised it as an upcoming feature), but then gave in to NIH. Probably because it didn't fit their plan for mobile, and seeing the runaway success in that dept you can't really blame them. But we digress! Is ZFS even a good system for removable media? Heck no. What do you want to use it with? Digital cameras? Portable music players? 2007 called and wants its toys back. Backups? Yeah, that can work, but there's little value in being able to recover backups on a foreign OS. Giving someone a random file on a thumb drive? Use ExFAT (or even plain old FAT32), just keep it simple!

ksec 3y ago

I am just thinking if we could have one decent FS across both BSD and Linux. And it would still be better than CDDL.

rollcat 3y ago
If you just want to exchange data on removable media, use ExFAT. What problem are you trying to solve? Different OS's prefer different filesystems, because filesystems tend to be both complicated and heavily opinionated in design and implementation - just like different OS's. Linux is the odd one by supporting several dozen, all the other OS's stick to 1 or 2 (usually "old" and "new" like HFS+/APFS, FAT/NTFS, etc), plus UDF&FAT as the lowest common denominator for data interchange. There is very little precedent / use cases for sharing volumes like you suggest: non-removable disks tend to stay in one machine for their lifetime; dual-booting is extremely niche (where Linux/BSD themselves are all niche) and mostly a domain of enthusiasts.
- klardotsh 3y ago
  Sure, but something as mundane as licensing being the reason we can't even try is kinda depressing. One ZFS-grade filesystem that could have Windows, Linux, and BSD implementations, allowing robust external storage with all the promises of modern snapshotting filesystems? Ah. What a dream. Maybe in 10-20 years if someone white-rooms a bcachefs or ZFS implementation, I guess.
  - rollcat 3y ago
    Again, CDDL is effectively "free enough" (it's basically a fork of MPL/weak copyleft) that both FreeBSD and Linux (although not mainline) incorporate ZFS. Whether it can be mixed with GPL is a very good question, the facts are that 1. it wasn't the intention for it to be incompatible, 2. it was never tested in court, 3. several popular distros nowadays ship the spl.ko & zfs.ko binaries. I recommend this talk by Bryan Cantrill, which provides more context on the whole licensing story for Solaris: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1375s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1375s> TL;DW: lots of effort and good will was put into making this code as free as possible, with the intention of making it broadly usable. There are other reasons why e.g. OpenBSD won't adopt ZFS, the main one being the sheer complexity: <https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/ZFS-on-OpenBSD https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/ZFS-on-OpenBSD>. Again, different projects, different goals. Apple heavily considered ZFS (even advertised it as an upcoming feature), but then gave in to NIH. Probably because it didn't fit their plan for mobile, and seeing the runaway success in that dept you can't really blame them. But we digress! Is ZFS even a good system for removable media? Heck no. What do you want to use it with? Digital cameras? Portable music players? 2007 called and wants its toys back. Backups? Yeah, that can work, but there's little value in being able to recover backups on a foreign OS. Giving someone a random file on a thumb drive? Use ExFAT (or even plain old FAT32), just keep it simple!