ZFS and Ubuntu

[nepilsonis]

Matt Sealey wrote 2 hours ago: (permalink)

I do not see how this is such a big "licensing" problem - the CDDL and GPL-2 are "incompatible" but this just means the verbatim ZFS code will never be accepted into the *mainline kernel*. Ubuntu has a specific solution to this - the "ubuntu" directory in the kernel tree, which holds stuff like compcache (BTW *please* update this to 0.5.3) and wireless drivers and so on.

That has not stopped Ubuntu shipping non-free Proprietary drivers (either licensed under some other license than GPL) and even binary drivers.

It astounds me that nobody has even bothered to make a Linux kernel module that implements ZFS natively, yet everyone who is that concerned is probably running fglrx or some binary wireless firmware or putting something through NDISWrapper... or running WINE..

Bryan Donlan wrote 1 hour ago: (permalink)

On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Matt Sealey<matt@genesi-usa.com> wrote:
[...]
> I do not see how this is such a big "licensing" problem - the CDDL and
> GPL-2 are "incompatible" but this just means the verbatim ZFS code will
> never be accepted into the *mainline kernel*. Ubuntu has a specific
> solution to this - the "ubuntu" directory in the kernel tree, which
> holds stuff like compcache (BTW *please* update this to 0.5.3) and
> wireless drivers and so on.
>
> That has not stopped Ubuntu shipping non-free Proprietary drivers
> (either licensed under some other license than GPL) and even binary
> drivers.
>
> It astounds me that nobody has even bothered to make a Linux kernel
> module that implements ZFS natively, yet everyone who is that concerned
> is probably running fglrx or some binary wireless firmware or putting
> something through NDISWrapper... or running WINE..

Hm, indeed - the register_filesystem call isn't marked as being for
GPL modules only. That said, it's still up to someone to actually make
the porting effort, and with btrfs coming along nicely, it's probably
not seen as that big of a deal.
There's always the option to port it yourself, or hire someone to do so :)