Apple Discontinues ZFS Project

Zaurus writes "Apple has replaced its ZFS project page with a notice that 'The ZFS project has been discontinued. The mailing list and repository will also be removed shortly.' Apple originally touted ZFS as a feature that would be available in Snow Leopard Server. A few months before release, all mention of ZFS was removed from the Apple web site and literature, and ZFS was notably absent from Snow Leopard Server at launch. Despite repeated attempts to get clarification about their plans from ZFS, Apple has not made any official statement regarding the matter. A zfs-macos Google group has been set up for members of Apple's zfs-discuss mailing list to migrate to, as many people had started using the unfinished ZFS port already. The call is out for developers who can continue the forked project." Daring Fireball suggests that Apple's decision could have been motivated by NetApp's patent lawsuit over ZFS.

Comments

The straight dope

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anon, lest someone guess who my sources are.

The long and short of it was, Apple and Sun couldn't come to terms on the licensing. Sun wanted a lot of money for giving it to Apple under different terms and the amount they wanted was in the range of "hell, we could do it ourselves for that".

Add to that, the Oracle buyout and Sun going into management paralysis, and Apple decided to go it alone.

Apple's CoreOS team includes several of the lead engineers from the ZFS project (who fled the remnants of Sun in the Schwartz melt-down), and the architect of the BeFS. I'm expecting Apple to do their own next-generation file system, probably in the 10.7 timeframe.

Re:The straight dope

[Robotbeat]

"The flip side is that I've heard that Apple's file systems team is full steam ahead on their own next-generation file system. And, perhaps not coincidentally, they're hiring." from http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/10/23/zfs

This is pretty shitty because it'll fragment the momentum ZFS had in being the next-gen ubiquitous file system. When it was clear ZFS wasn't coming to Linux, those guys got btrfs going, now Apple is doing their own, while ZFS obviously will stay around too. Microsoft obviously wasnt on board for any of this, and without the momentum behind ZFS it never will. This nonsense isnt helping, and I think the best Oracle could do it release it under all the licenses that'll get it into OSX/Linux and perhaps even Windows. Can Oracle go over Sun's head on this or Sun==Oracle?

(emphasis mine)

Unfortunately, btrfs isn't "going" anywhere. Guess who their development was funded by? That's right, Oracle! Notice that they haven't released anything new since BEFORE Sun's shareholders approved the acquisition? (Latest release on the btrfs wiki is v .19, released in June 2009) It's not exactly improving at a breakneck pace... If btrfs is going to go anywhere, they need some real development money.

Dang Oracle.

Re:The Reason is Probably Technical

[jcr]

There just doesn't seem to have been the will within the OS X development group to make this work and to support and fully integrate ZFS into the inner workings of the OS.

I can't agree with that. Spend ten minutes with the filesystem engineers at WWDC, and you wouldn't come away thinking there was any shortage of will to make ZFS fly on the Mac.

-jcr