From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Nov 5 23:22:23 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 97742106566C for ; Fri, 5 Nov 2010 23:22:23 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from cpghost@cordula.ws) Received: from mail-qy0-f175.google.com (mail-qy0-f175.google.com [209.85.216.175]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5D76D8FC19 for ; Fri, 5 Nov 2010 23:22:23 +0000 (UTC) Received: by qyk1 with SMTP id 1so401qyk.13 for ; Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:22:22 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.224.216.5 with SMTP id hg5mr1529426qab.76.1288999342039; Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:22:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.229.41.68 with HTTP; Fri, 5 Nov 2010 16:22:21 -0700 (PDT) X-Originating-IP: [93.203.53.2] In-Reply-To: References: <4CD45A11.7060002@stillbilde.net> <20101105213433.GC8648@guilt.hydra> Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2010 00:22:21 +0100 Message-ID: From: "C. P. Ghost" To: Alejandro Imass Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ZFS License and Future X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2010 23:22:23 -0000 On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 11:19 PM, Alejandro Imass wrote: > So, my inquiry to this community is: should we really be promoting the > use of ZFS directly by putting it on the FBSD handbook? Maybe it > should go on a different document, and make it really optional. MySQL > is another example, and Open Office, and to top it off BDB. Yes, it's > "Oracle Berkeley DB" - are we as a community continue to allow, and > worse yet promote, this trend? First of all, FreeBSD devs are putting ZFS in the source tree, not just in the handbook. Then, what's being put there is under the CDDL. Should Oracle change the license for subsequent releases of ZFS in a way unacceptable to us, FreeBSD's ZFS will either stagnate and rot, or it will get developed independently in FreeBSD (and perhaps in IllumOS?) along a different path, a.k.a. a fork. This leaves us the problem of patents... and here we're always on slippery grounds, especially in the few countries in the world where software is patentable at all. But this is a general problem, not limited to ZFS. > Anyway, I'm not going to use it any more. I think that we have to > raise awareness to Companies that create Open Source not sell > themselves out to these vicious looters. Or at least have the decency > to release one final version under a license that will allow the > communities to continue development and keeping the software really > open. Again, you're free to use UFS (or any other file system) instead. In many cases, UFS is also a better choice. But those who opt to use ZFS should still be able to do so. Should things go horribly wrong in the future (and with Oracle's bad behaviour towards the OpenSolaris community, there are reasons to be skeptical), copying data back to UFS shouldn't be such a big problem, right? > Best, > Alejandro Imass -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/