zfs in linux, maybe! (read only)
Ok, so Linux doesn’t have ZFS yet, but it might not be that far off. There are signs of a readonly implementation, depending on whether or not people actually understand the license, being considered by linux kernel hackers. This would be a huge boost for linux, and Solaris alike. As Darren Moffat points out, ZFS already exists in the FreeBSD source tree, and its likely to be in Mac OSX . Given this, surely its only a matter of time before we see it put in. Already we’ve seen Linus have talks with Jeff Bonwick, which is definitely a good sign.
Maybe once this is done, a proper attempt at getting dtrace across might happen. After all, something like dtrace is highly desirable on any operating system.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:44 pm
ZFS it is in Mac OS X 10.5 and you can get the read write bits ok from macosxforge. The kicker for linux is the GPL not being compatible with any other license, but the Linux kernel guys have always had the same issue with using other open source code that is not GPL compatible (that is most licenses).
I guess the question is - if Sun made ZFS GPLv2 would that remove Solaris’s advantage. I think the answer is no (because of dtrace, SMF and the high standards the OS is written and maintained to for a start), but from a Linux users point of view and experience it is harder to see that side of things, dtrace is not a simple concept and SMF is not the most thrilling of features (until it saves your arse).
I like to think that cross licensing the ZFS code under a GPLv2 license and getting it into Linux would only increase the interest in OpenSolaris - but maybe I’m being naive abut that! I guess the fun would be if ZFS got put under GPLv3!