Ubuntu

ZFS filesystem

Registered by Jack Wasey

ZFS is an open source filesystem used in Solaris 10. It has powerful applications for server and workstation use cases, and would be a radical and attractive feature or basis for Ubuntu.

Blueprint information

Status:
Not started
Approver:
None
Priority:
Undefined
Drafter:
None
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
None
Definition:
New
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Unknown
Milestone target:
None

Related branches

Whiteboard

2011-02-26 - this blueprint is obsolete because ZFS integration is mostly finished upstream and Oracle is unlikely to relicense it. See: http://www.zfsonlinux.org/ and http://www.zfs-fuse.net/

2007-06-03 - from what I understand, the zfs filesystem has been open sourced under a license that is incompatible with the GPL, and therefore is not likely to be included in the kernel. However, there is an implementation of zfs using fusefs. Google for fusefs and zfs for details.
OpenSolaris points to: [http://zfs-on-fuse.blogspot.com/]

2007-06-06: ZFS is under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). It is similar to Mozilla Public License (MPL). Ubuntu includes e.g. Firefox that's under a similar license, so why not ZFS? See: [http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/faq/licensing_faq/] for more info on the license.

2007-06-06: Not ZFS because you can't link things incompatible with the GPL into the kernel directly. Firefox is in Ubuntu, but it is not linked into the kernel directly, so this is not a problem. To have ZFS directly supported would mean having it as a (set of) kernel module(s), which can't happen because of the license incompatibility. There is hope that Sun will relicense ZFS under the GPL as they have done with Java, but so far this has not happened yet.

2007-06-10 (PP): Correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK you CAN link GPL code with whatever you want. What you CAN'T do is redistribute the result, if you have linked with something GPL-incompatible. Kernel modules can be dynamically linked, which opens a possibility - the ZFS module can be distributed in the Ubuntu repositories. Dynamic linking with the kernel will happen only on the users' machines, but since there is no redistribution, there will be no violation. If the ZFS module requires any kernel header files to compile, these will have to be rewritten. The feasibility of this approach depends on the complexity of the last task.

(?)

Work Items