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FreeNAS Switching From FreeBSD To Debian Linux
dnaumov writes "FreeNAS, a popular, free NAS solution, is moving away from using FreeBSD as its underlying core OS and switching to Debian Linux. Version 0.8 of FreeNAS as well as all further releases are going to be based on Linux, while the FreeBSD-based 0.7 branch of FreeNAS is going into maintenance-only mode, according to main developer Volker Theile. A discussion about the switch, including comments from the developers, can be found on the FreeNAS SourceForge discussion forum. Some users applaud the change, which promises improved hardware compatibility, while others voice concerns regarding the future of their existing setups and lack of ZFS support in Linux."
Well, what's stopping people using NexentaStor (non-free) or NexentaOS (free as in beer/speech)? Better yet, Nexenta is OpenSolaris w/ ZFS, etc, but is an Ubuntu LTS 8.04-based distribution. Its always been the best of both worlds. If you have something using ZFS today, you can export the pool, install Nexenta, and reimport, being back up in minutes.
In this case, as with many FOSS projects, the sub-1.0 numbers probably mean "there are still features to be added before we consider our work complete".
I'd change your definition to "before we consider the initial version of our work complete". This is exactly why I mentioned sub 1.0 version number in a piece of free software. It means there is no marketing department requiring bumping up the version number to impress anybody.
So, as you say, the devs themselves don't think it has the capabilities to be granted the 1.0 number. For whatever reasons they feel.
In other words, a 0.8 version might be perfectly stable, just not feature-complete from the author's point of view, and perfetly sufficient for a subset of potential users with less sophisticated needs.
The key word here is "might". It might, it might not. One also has to consider that even if the system does have all the features you want and seems stable, is it being properly tested and maintained? Has it been around long enough for it to count as some indication that the devs aren't going to just give up on it soon? Is there already a community around it?
All of this goes into choosing a sub-1.0 project for something important. This is what I meant. To depend on an early version of a piece of software is too big of a commitment without the proper analysis of these and many other issues, most of which are not related to the features per se.
And, in any case, it is free software. So anyone can fork the project and continue with it. And it seems there is actually a fork of this project to keep it running over FreeBSD.
None of this changes what I said. If whoever is using it and worried about its future did consider this issues, good for them. If not, well...
-- SouNerd.com
Or, they don't care. Changes in major release number often mean incompatible features. I'd have given a lot, for example, for OpenSSL to use a sane numbering system and release "0.97" as "9.7", and "0.98" as "9.8". Or the idiots over at CPAN who release version 1.1, 1.2, 1.21, 2.2105, then 1.3.