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Comment by supern00b | Hacker News Reader

why do you think that it won't replace zfs? it has all the features that zfs have

If it just has all the features zfs has and none of the years of stability that zfs has... why would any current user (who is by definition ok with the licence) take the effort to switch? What's the extra benefit that zfs currently doesn't provide?

Memory usage: zfs is still not neatly integrated and requires a big chunk of memory to operate efficiently.

Big chunk of memory - that's not the case except if you are using deduplication. I have it running fine on a 4GB machine (10TB mirrored volume) without any issues.

What I believe gp was referring to was that zfs uses different caching system that the main system. Specifically arc vs page cache do almost the same job, but are separate and may fight for resources. Discussed in a few places, but here's an example with some behaviour summary https://www.reddit.com/r/zfs/comments/o8xqzb/zfs_on_linux_ca...

Just being in the mainstream kernel, instead of an out-of-tree module, already gives a couple of benefits. The code will always be kept up-to-date with the internal kernel API, so you won't have a situation where the kernel is updated but the out-of-tree module fails to compile due to an API change. And if you're running a signed kernel (for SecureBoot), you don't need to have a complex setup to add an extra key and sign the module whenever it's rebuilt. Also, as others have mentioned, being in-tree means it's better integrated with the rest of the kernel; this includes making changes to core kernel code when they could help the module.

> What's the extra benefit that zfs currently doesn't provide?

Not being at the mercy of a company like Oracle is a huge plus in many ways. A huge plus for future development and risk-free adoption.

I use ZFS on a server of mine, but I am one of those paranoid people that would switch just to get away from a project that could be hamstringed at any moment if Oracle has one of its episodes again.

ZFS (hopefully) never finding its way into the mainline kernel is kind of a meta-disadvantage.

OpenZFS is the primary place where ZFS development happens and it's not managed by Oracle.

Yes that I am aware of, my fear is Oracle going on a legal rampage, not direct mismanagement.

What are they going to do about it?

They can't just relicense OpenZFS. The only attack vector is suing Ubuntu for distributing zfs because Canonical's lawyers think that's fine but even then, you're still free to use it by adding it to the system yourself like any other distribution is doing.

Running a new filesystem is far more dangerous than your theoretical legal concerns.

They can go after end users if they manage to find a business angle where they can start charging for the system. "But that's silly, Oracle wouldn't be bothered by small businesses, right?" https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/d1ttzp/oracle_is_...

How can they charge a product that's not their own?

OpenZFS is licensed under a free software license. There's no mechanism by which they could demand anything. At best they could try to sue Canonical for CDDL violations, though the legal arguments online suggest that Oracle wouldn't have a leg to stand on here because the license incompatibility comes from the GPL side (meaning that Linux copyright holders might be able to sue Canonical but even that is a stretch since it's hard to argue OpenZFS is a derivative work of Linux).

The thread you linked is someone who was using software with a proprietary license against its terms and is being asked to pay for its usage -- obviously I think Oracle is being scummy but it's not a comparable situation at all. This would be like saying that you won't use VS Code because Microsoft once demanded that someone who was using a cracked copy of Windows pay them -- it's a complete non-sequitur.

Would you refuse to use ZFS on FreeBSD as well?

Because right now it "has no features" because it's not really widely available. No installation, no features. The proof of the pudding is in the actual shipping and installing and using it. :)

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