
Apple Pulls the Plug Completely on ZFS - durin42
http://zfs.macosforge.org/
======
durin42
There's a Google Group [0] and a github repo [1] for those interested in
keeping going with the last code drop from Apple.

[0] <https://groups.google.com/group/zfs-macos>

[1] <http://github.com/peaceful/zfs-mac>

~~~
dlsspy
I ported it and have an installer for Snow Leopard:

<http://dustin.github.com/2009/10/23/mac-zfs.html>

------
jbyers
Five years on and ZFS still remains just out of reach. I'm not a likely user
on OS X (anyone got a good use case for laptop use?) but other filesystem +
volume management solutions on Linux never seem to match up.

~~~
cookiecaper
Here's hoping btrfs keeps it real.

~~~
dtf
Me too. Ted Ts'o (ext4's maintainer) has said the btrfs is the future.

~~~
rbanffy
Just to make sure: is the guy happily married? ;-)

~~~
cpach
I guess this was a reference to Hans Reiser killing his wife. Do you really
think domestic violence is a laughing matter?

~~~
dkarl
Everything's a laughing matter if it happens to you, so by the Golden Rule it
should be a laughing matter if it happens to someone else.

------
bprater
Well, that's fairly disappointing. I've been excitedly watching for it to make
it into the operating system. I think it would be a positive but subtle shake-
up for the industry.

------
dylanz
Damn, was looking forward to ZFS. Are they working on an alternative?

~~~
bbb
According to Gruber, yes.

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/10/23/zfs>

Here's your chance in building the better alternative. ;-)

[http://jobs.apple.com/index.ajs?method=mExternal.showJob&...](http://jobs.apple.com/index.ajs?method=mExternal.showJob&RID=42559)

~~~
wmf
Unfortunately, if Apple dropped ZFS because of the NetApp lawsuit that means
their homegrown next-gen filesystem will probably avoid many of the efficient-
yet-patented techniques found in ZFS.

~~~
protomyth
They could license the patents. NetApp has a 9.6B market cap, so it would not
be an easy takeover target.

~~~
martingordon
Except that Apple has $30B+ in cash. Still, Apple could roll their own for
much less than the $9.6B NetApp is worth.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
How much could they roll their own for, few hundred thousand? Depends on
timescale and starting point I suppose. But let's call it $1Million USD. That
surely puts an upper bound on licensing the tech needed from NetApp to
continue with ZFS. Perhaps they just think ZFS sucks?

~~~
Tuna-Fish
$1Million for a next-gen filesystem? The programmer wages for the testing
phase will cost 10 times that.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Hans Reiser made a couple for no wages ... I guess that muddies the waters
when considering the baseline for me.

~~~
dagw
Writing a file system isn't the hard part. Testing and verifying that it
actually works under all kinds of strange scenarios and to make really really
sure it won't corrupt your data, no matter what. That's the hard (and
expensive) part. I seem to recall reiserFS being plagued with a number of bugs
that only showed in uncommon corner cases that trivial testing wouldn't find.

------
pclark
why?

~~~
samg
Looks like it was a legal issue:

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/10/23/zfs>

~~~
msie
Ah yes, patents - the enemy of progress.

~~~
protomyth
I'm all for hardware patents (they seem to get licensed and used), but these
software ones have to go.

~~~
randallsquared
The Firewire patent(s) arguably killed Firewire, in an analogous way to
software patents.

~~~
adamc
I think you mean the license fees killed Firewire. Apple got greedy and lost.

~~~
wmf
It's the same thing. The purpose of the Firewire patents was to collect
licensing fees.

------
c00p3r
Seems like this decision came from Oracle. Switch to freebsd. =)

------
pinko
Noooooooooooo.

