Hacker News Reader

Comment by dralley | Hacker News Reader

I've read several such LKML threads about bcachefs and while the discussions have been contentious (and Kent could stand to chill out a bit), everyone has been in agreement that they'd like to see bcachefs succeed and be merged. The major technical blockers have been addressed or are being addressed.

Bcachefs also has plenty of features which ZFS does not, so I don't see why you're so critical.

Oracle could relicense ZFS at any time, or make an explicit statement about its legal status. They have not done so after 10 years.

View on HN

Oracle could relicense its own ZFS (probably?) But it couldn't relicense the ZFS everyone actually uses because they don't own the copyrights of independent contributors, some of whom oppose license changes.

yeah i love love love ZFS and use it everywhere and am very excited to see Bcachefs get merged. More legit competition in this space is good. Btrfs doesn't apply, it's not even in the same league.

>I've read several such LKML threads about bcachefs and while the discussions have been contentious (and Kent could stand to chill out a bit), everyone has been in agreement that they'd like to see bcachefs succeed and be merged. Bcachefs also has plenty of features which ZFS does not, so I don't see why you're so critical.

Only because I've read this story more than a few times before? See: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

>Oracle could relicense ZFS at any time, or make an explicit statement about its legal status. They have not done so after 10 years.

Any legal difficulty remains from the GPL side, and no suit has been brought in the years upon years of the GPL hair shirts screaming about non-compliance. Unfortunately, the GPL hair shirts don't have much (any) credibility on the subject of what the GPL means.

Bring the suit or STFU. I have no patience for armchair legal opinions from people who won't put their money where their mouth is. Stop spreading legal FUD!

> Only because I've read this story more than a few times before? See: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Sorry, if we are looking at the same thing, the earliest time of a HN entry of bcachefs trying to be merged upstream was not even 1 month ago. All the other entries are related to features that are called "merge" and not actual merge requests or the author declaring that the code was up to be merged but not an actual merge request.

1 month ago is nothing in terms of kernel time, so I don't think your argument holds up.

There was a previous attempt 4 years ago. It's normal that there's some pushback and things get worked on for some more time. Nothing that indicates a serious problem here. Kent worked on the filesystem overall rather than addressing the comments and resubmitting immediately.

(But that's still a single initial attempt, not "a few" like the OP claimed)

I can't believe I have to say this to people. Before you nit pick, expand your search parameters? See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17138877

That article says "An update on bcachefs" and "it is time to start talking about getting the code upstream".

The article also makes it clear that it's not ready. And for a big patch like this, you're going to "start talking" long before actually submitting.

The only thing that supports your point is the incorrect title that was submitted to HN. But this submission got 6 upvotes and 0 comments, so almost nobody saw this title.

Notably, Oracle does not include ZFS with Oracle Linux. As I said, they could easily clear this up, but they haven't.

I knew your pen name was familiar because I was liking your other comments in the recent RH threads. What's amusing is I previously thought RH was far too precious re: its interpretation of the GPL, especially re: ZFS.

> Notably, Oracle does not include ZFS with Oracle Linux. As I said, they could easily clear this up, but they haven't.

> Oracle could relicense ZFS at any time, or make an explicit statement about its legal status. They have not done so after 10 years.

That would make this easy, but unfortunately easy is not the case we have here. Just as RH has chosen strict compliance with the GPL re RHEL, I think strict compliance with the GPLv2 is what is required here. Someone, I wish it was RH, should say "We've made a mistake. The GPL is not a suicide pact." For instance, interpreting any object which dynamically links to a GPL licensed work as a derived work is fundamentally anti-business, anti-interoperability, and, I'd argue, anti-FOSS. Being GPL compliant does not mean blithely accepting whatever legal claptrap FSF and SFC can summon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com