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Ubuntu 16.04 LTS To Have Official Support For ZFS File System (dustinkirkland.com)

Posted by timothy on from the options-are-good dept.

LichtSpektren writes: Ubuntu developer Dustin Kirkland has posted on his blog that Canonical plans to officially support the ZFS file system for the next Ubuntu LTS release, 16.04 "Xenial Xerus." The file system, which originates in Solaris UNIX, is renowned for its feature set (Kirkland touts "snapshots, copy-on-write cloning, continuous integrity checking against data corruption, automatic repair, efficient data compression") and its stability. "You'll find zfs.ko automatically built and installed on your Ubuntu systems. No more DKMS-built modules!" N.B. ext4 will still be the default file system due to the unresolved licensing conflict between Linux's GPLv2 and ZFS's CDDL.

1 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Re:BTRFS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    he's picking his file system so that he complies with Copyright Law. why would you have an issue with that? i also don't understand why a Corporation (Canonical) would encourage people to ignore Copyright Law.

    Identify the copyright violation:

    "This problem is being worked around by providing the kernel facilities through a separate kernel module, a technical solution for a legal problem that is also being employed by vendors and distributors of proprietary hardware drivers."

    The GPL does not autmatically apply to anything that touches the kernel. It only applies to derivative works of a GPLed work. If they write a GPLed wrapper that is a derivative of both the kernel and the ZFS sources and chose to dual license it, then there's no need for the ZFS sources to be GPL licensed -- merely the wrapper. No GPL-code-inspired modifications, no GPL-defined derivatie work and no GPL licensing requirement. (So sad.)

    For a group which worships the copyright hack that the GPL represents, it's odd that so many become so blind and incensed by anyone who dares to come up with a couter-hack to overcome some of the license's more idiotic features (i.e., it's open source, but it's not pure, GPL-certified open source, so you can't use it with our stuff). The only case that comes close to supporting GPL proponents' borg-like interpretation of the term "derviate work" is the Oracle v. Google fiasco. If that's the company that you want to keep, don't expect sympathy from me.

    I had to write a module like that one.

    The acronym for the module in our product was "bmrms". I forget what the "official" meaning was, but it really meant Bite Me RMS