Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Erik Trimble]

On 12/25/2010 12:16 PM, joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote:

Erik Trimble  wrote:

I've read Joerg's paper, and I've read several of the patents in
question, and nowhere around is there any real code. A bit of

Netapp filed patents (without code) in 1993, I of course have working code for
SuinOS-4.9 from 1991. Se below for more information.

Joerg - your paper used to be available here (which is where I read it
awhile ago), but not anymore:
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/wofs.ps.gz


I just re-looked, and I now remember that I got it from that URL via the 
Internet Archive (www.internet.org). It's still available at the URL 
above from 2001 at the Archive.




This address did go away in 2001 when the German government enforced
integration of GMD into Fraunhofer.

The old postscript version (created from troff) is here:

http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/wofs.ps.gz

A few years ago, a friend helped me to add the images that originally have been
created outside of troff and inserted the old way (using glue). Since 2006,
there is a pdf version that includes the images:

http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/WoFS.pdf


Is there a better location?  (and, a full English translation?  I read
it in German, but my German is maybe at 7th-grade level, so I might have
missed some subtleties...)

There is currently no English tranlation and as a result of the legal situation
in 1991, I could not publish the related implementation. Even getting the
SunOS-4.0 source code in 1988 in order to allow the implementation, was a bit
tricky. Horst Winterhoff (Chief Sun Germany and Sun Europe) asked Bill Joy for
a permission to give away the source for my Diploma Thesis. As a result of
this and the fact that there was no official howto from Sun for writing
filesystems, I was forced to keep the implementation unpublished (as for the
implementation of mmap() in wofs, I was forced to copy aprox. 100 lines from
the UFS code).
If the code you copied is currently still in the OpenSolaris codebase, 
then you're OK. But, the SunOS codebase is significantly different than 
the Solaris one, so I wouldn't automatically assume that you can publish 
that code.  Though, if your borrowing was restricted to the UFS 
implementation (and not the Virtual Memory/Filesystem caching stuff), 
your chances are good that it's still in the OpenSolaris codebase.



Since June 2005, I would asume that the situation is different and there is no
longer a problem to publish the WOFS source. If people are interested, I could
publish the unedit original state from 1991 (including the SCCS history for my
implementation) even though it looks a bit messy.
For at least historical reasons, that would be nice. Though, I don't 
want to offer legal advice as to the possibility of problems, 
particularly for someone outside the US system. :-)



I tried to verify whether the submission of the diploma thesis in 1991 is an
official publication and in theory it should be, as a copy is stored in the
univertity library. Unfortunately, the university library is uanble to find the
paper. There are however many people who could confirm that the development
really happened between 1988 and 1991.

If your thesis paper was available via Lexisnexis, then, it certainly 
should count as officially published for any legal system. If not, I 
suspect that different countries would have different standards for 
university thesis.



Maybe, it is a good idea to send a mail to someone from eff.org?

Jörg

Yup.  They'd be the right people to talk to.

--

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Java System Support
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Joerg Schilling]

joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (Joerg Schilling) wrote:

> Erik Trimble  wrote:
>
> > I've read Joerg's paper, and I've read several of the patents in 
> > question, and nowhere around is there any real code. A bit of 
>
> Netapp filed patents (without code) in 1993, I of course have working code 
> for 
> SuinOS-4.9 from 1991. Se below for more information.

Sorry for the sticky fingers: this of course should be SunOS-4.0.

Jörg

-- 
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   j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni)  
   joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: 
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Joerg Schilling]

Erik Trimble  wrote:

> I've read Joerg's paper, and I've read several of the patents in 
> question, and nowhere around is there any real code. A bit of 

Netapp filed patents (without code) in 1993, I of course have working code for 
SuinOS-4.9 from 1991. Se below for more information.

> pseudo-code and some math, but no full, working code.  And, granted that 
> I'm not a IP lawyer, but it does look like Joerg's work is prior art 
> (and, given that the standard is supposed to be what someone in the 
> industry would consider obvious, based on their knowledge, and I think I 
> qualify). Which all points to the real problem of software patents - 
> they're really patents on IDEAS, not on a specific implementation.  Who 
> the moron was that really though that was OK (yes, I know who 
> specifically, but in general...) should be shot.
>
> Copyright is fine or protecting software work, but patents?
>
> Joerg - your paper used to be available here (which is where I read it 
> awhile ago), but not anymore:  
> http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/wofs.ps.gz

This address did go away in 2001 when the German government enforced 
integration of GMD into Fraunhofer.

The old postscript version (created from troff) is here:

http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/wofs.ps.gz

A few years ago, a friend helped me to add the images that originally have been 
created outside of troff and inserted the old way (using glue). Since 2006, 
there is a pdf version that includes the images:

http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/WoFS.pdf

> Is there a better location?  (and, a full English translation?  I read 
> it in German, but my German is maybe at 7th-grade level, so I might have 
> missed some subtleties...)

There is currently no English tranlation and as a result of the legal situation 
in 1991, I could not publish the related implementation. Even getting the 
SunOS-4.0 source code in 1988 in order to allow the implementation, was a bit 
tricky. Horst Winterhoff (Chief Sun Germany and Sun Europe) asked Bill Joy for 
a permission to give away the source for my Diploma Thesis. As a result of 
this and the fact that there was no official howto from Sun for writing 
filesystems, I was forced to keep the implementation unpublished (as for the 
implementation of mmap() in wofs, I was forced to copy aprox. 100 lines from 
the UFS code).

Since June 2005, I would asume that the situation is different and there is no 
longer a problem to publish the WOFS source. If people are interested, I could 
publish the unedit original state from 1991 (including the SCCS history for my 
implementation) even though it looks a bit messy. 

I tried to verify whether the submission of the diploma thesis in 1991 is an 
official publication and in theory it should be, as a copy is stored in the 
univertity library. Unfortunately, the university library is uanble to find the 
paper. There are however many people who could confirm that the development 
really happened between 1988 and 1991.

Maybe, it is a good idea to send a mail to someone from eff.org?

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
   j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni)  
   joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: 
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Erik Trimble]

On 12/25/2010 11:19 AM, Tim Cook wrote:



On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Erik Trimble > wrote:


On 12/25/2010 6:25 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:

From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org

[mailto:zfs-discuss- 
boun...@opensolaris.org ]
On Behalf Of Joerg Schilling

And people should note that Netapp filed their patents
starting from 1993.
This
is 5 years after I started to develop WOFS, which is copy
on write. This

still

In any case, this is 20 year old technology. Aren't
patents something to
protect new ideas?

Boy, those guys must be really dumb to waste their time filing
billion
dollar lawsuits, protecting 20-year old technology, when it's
so obvious
that you and other people clearly invented it before them, and
all the money
they waste on lawyers can never achieve anything.  They should
all fire
themselves.  And anybody who defends against it can safely
hire a law
student for $20/hr to represent them, and just pull out your
documents as
defense, because that's so easy.

Plus, as you said, the technology is so old, it should be
worthless by now.
Why are we all wasting our time in this list talking about
irrelevant old
technology, anyway?


While that's a bit sarcastic there Ned,  it *should* be the
literal truth.  But, as the SCO/Linux suit showed, having no
realistic basis for a lawsuit doesn't prevent one from being
dragged through the (U.S.) courts for the better part of a decade.



Why can't we have a loser-pays civil system like every other
civilized country?


-- 
Erik Trimble

Java System Support
Mailstop:  usca22-123
Phone:  x17195
Santa Clara, CA
Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)



If you've got enough money, we do.  You just have to make it to the 
end of the trial, and have a judge who feels similar.  They often 
award monetary settlements for the cost of legal defense to the victor.


--Tim



Which is completely useless as a system. I'm still significantly 
out-of-pocket for a suit that I shouldn't have had to fight in the first 
place, and the likelihood that I get to recover that money isn't good 
(defense cost awards aren't common).  There's no disincentive to 
trolling the legal system, forcing settlements on those unable to fight 
a protracted suit, even if they're sure to win the case.


Using the US legal system as a business strategy is evil, pure and 
simple, and one all too common nowadays.



--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop:  usca22-123
Phone:  x17195
Santa Clara, CA
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Erik Trimble]

On 12/25/2010 10:59 AM, Tim Cook wrote:



On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 8:25 AM, Edward Ned Harvey 
> wrote:


> From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org
 [mailto:zfs-discuss-

> boun...@opensolaris.org ] On
Behalf Of Joerg Schilling
>
> And people should note that Netapp filed their patents starting
from 1993.
> This
> is 5 years after I started to develop WOFS, which is copy on
write. This
still
>
> In any case, this is 20 year old technology. Aren't patents
something to
> protect new ideas?

Boy, those guys must be really dumb to waste their time filing billion
dollar lawsuits, protecting 20-year old technology, when it's so
obvious
that you and other people clearly invented it before them, and all
the money
they waste on lawyers can never achieve anything.  They should all
fire
themselves.  And anybody who defends against it can safely hire a law
student for $20/hr to represent them, and just pull out your
documents as
defense, because that's so easy.

Plus, as you said, the technology is so old, it should be
worthless by now.
Why are we all wasting our time in this list talking about
irrelevant old
technology, anyway?




Indeed.  Isn't the Oracle database itself at least 20 years old?  And 
Windows?  And Solaris itself?  All the employees of those companies 
should probably just start donating their time for free instead of 
collecting a paycheck since it's quite obvious they should no longer 
be able to charge for their product.


What I find most entertaining is all the armchair lawyers on this 
mailing list that think they've got prior art when THEY'VE NEVER EVEN 
SEEN THE CODE IN QUESTION!



--Tim

Well...

I've read Joerg's paper, and I've read several of the patents in 
question, and nowhere around is there any real code. A bit of 
pseudo-code and some math, but no full, working code.  And, granted that 
I'm not a IP lawyer, but it does look like Joerg's work is prior art 
(and, given that the standard is supposed to be what someone in the 
industry would consider obvious, based on their knowledge, and I think I 
qualify). Which all points to the real problem of software patents - 
they're really patents on IDEAS, not on a specific implementation.  Who 
the moron was that really though that was OK (yes, I know who 
specifically, but in general...) should be shot.


Copyright is fine or protecting software work, but patents?

Joerg - your paper used to be available here (which is where I read it 
awhile ago), but not anymore:  
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/wofs.ps.gz


Is there a better location?  (and, a full English translation?  I read 
it in German, but my German is maybe at 7th-grade level, so I might have 
missed some subtleties...)


[As obvious as it is, it should be pointed out, I'm making these statements as 
a very personal opinion, and I'm certain Oracle wouldn't have the same one. I 
in no way represent Oracle.]

--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop:  usca22-123
Phone:  x17195
Santa Clara, CA
Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Tim Cook]

On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Erik Trimble wrote:

> On 12/25/2010 6:25 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
>
>> From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
>>> boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Joerg Schilling
>>>
>>> And people should note that Netapp filed their patents starting from
>>> 1993.
>>> This
>>> is 5 years after I started to develop WOFS, which is copy on write. This
>>>
>> still
>>
>>> In any case, this is 20 year old technology. Aren't patents something to
>>> protect new ideas?
>>>
>> Boy, those guys must be really dumb to waste their time filing billion
>> dollar lawsuits, protecting 20-year old technology, when it's so obvious
>> that you and other people clearly invented it before them, and all the
>> money
>> they waste on lawyers can never achieve anything.  They should all fire
>> themselves.  And anybody who defends against it can safely hire a law
>> student for $20/hr to represent them, and just pull out your documents as
>> defense, because that's so easy.
>>
>> Plus, as you said, the technology is so old, it should be worthless by
>> now.
>> Why are we all wasting our time in this list talking about irrelevant old
>> technology, anyway?
>>
>>
> While that's a bit sarcastic there Ned,  it *should* be the literal truth.
>  But, as the SCO/Linux suit showed, having no realistic basis for a lawsuit
> doesn't prevent one from being dragged through the (U.S.) courts for the
> better part of a decade.
>
> 
>
> Why can't we have a loser-pays civil system like every other civilized
> country?
>
>
> --
> Erik Trimble
> Java System Support
> Mailstop:  usca22-123
> Phone:  x17195
> Santa Clara, CA
> Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)
>
>

If you've got enough money, we do.  You just have to make it to the end of
the trial, and have a judge who feels similar.  They often award monetary
settlements for the cost of legal defense to the victor.

--Tim
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Erik Trimble]

On 12/25/2010 6:25 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:

From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Joerg Schilling

And people should note that Netapp filed their patents starting from 1993.
This
is 5 years after I started to develop WOFS, which is copy on write. This

still

In any case, this is 20 year old technology. Aren't patents something to
protect new ideas?

Boy, those guys must be really dumb to waste their time filing billion
dollar lawsuits, protecting 20-year old technology, when it's so obvious
that you and other people clearly invented it before them, and all the money
they waste on lawyers can never achieve anything.  They should all fire
themselves.  And anybody who defends against it can safely hire a law
student for $20/hr to represent them, and just pull out your documents as
defense, because that's so easy.

Plus, as you said, the technology is so old, it should be worthless by now.
Why are we all wasting our time in this list talking about irrelevant old
technology, anyway?



While that's a bit sarcastic there Ned,  it *should* be the literal 
truth.  But, as the SCO/Linux suit showed, having no realistic basis for 
a lawsuit doesn't prevent one from being dragged through the (U.S.) 
courts for the better part of a decade.




Why can't we have a loser-pays civil system like every other civilized 
country?



--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop:  usca22-123
Phone:  x17195
Santa Clara, CA
Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Tim Cook]

On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 8:25 AM, Edward Ned Harvey <
opensolarisisdeadlongliveopensola...@nedharvey.com> wrote:

> > From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> > boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Joerg Schilling
> >
> > And people should note that Netapp filed their patents starting from
> 1993.
> > This
> > is 5 years after I started to develop WOFS, which is copy on write. This
> still
> >
> > In any case, this is 20 year old technology. Aren't patents something to
> > protect new ideas?
>
> Boy, those guys must be really dumb to waste their time filing billion
> dollar lawsuits, protecting 20-year old technology, when it's so obvious
> that you and other people clearly invented it before them, and all the
> money
> they waste on lawyers can never achieve anything.  They should all fire
> themselves.  And anybody who defends against it can safely hire a law
> student for $20/hr to represent them, and just pull out your documents as
> defense, because that's so easy.
>
> Plus, as you said, the technology is so old, it should be worthless by now.
> Why are we all wasting our time in this list talking about irrelevant old
> technology, anyway?
>



Indeed.  Isn't the Oracle database itself at least 20 years old?  And
Windows?  And Solaris itself?  All the employees of those companies should
probably just start donating their time for free instead of collecting a
paycheck since it's quite obvious they should no longer be able to charge
for their product.

What I find most entertaining is all the armchair lawyers on this mailing
list that think they've got prior art when THEY'VE NEVER EVEN SEEN THE CODE
IN QUESTION!


--Tim
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Joerg Schilling
> 
> And people should note that Netapp filed their patents starting from 1993.
> This
> is 5 years after I started to develop WOFS, which is copy on write. This
still
> 
> In any case, this is 20 year old technology. Aren't patents something to
> protect new ideas?

Boy, those guys must be really dumb to waste their time filing billion
dollar lawsuits, protecting 20-year old technology, when it's so obvious
that you and other people clearly invented it before them, and all the money
they waste on lawyers can never achieve anything.  They should all fire
themselves.  And anybody who defends against it can safely hire a law
student for $20/hr to represent them, and just pull out your documents as
defense, because that's so easy.

Plus, as you said, the technology is so old, it should be worthless by now.
Why are we all wasting our time in this list talking about irrelevant old
technology, anyway?

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Martin Matuska
> 
> Hi guys, I am one of the ZFS porting folks at FreeBSD.

That's all really cool, and IMHO, more promising than anything I knew before.  
But I'll really believe it if (a) some non-oracle organization wins a similar 
case, or (b) a major player such as Apple picks up ZFS and doesn't get 
threatened with lawsuit.  This would include the (basically nonexistent) 
possibility that folks like Dell, IBM, and HP start seriously contributing to 
the open-source ZFS codebase.

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Joerg Schilling]

Martin Matuska  wrote:

> Tim Cook  cook.ms> writes:
>
> > You are not a court of law, and that statement has not been tested.  It is
> your opinion and nothing more.  I'd appreciate if every time you repeated that
> statement, you'd preface it with "in my opinion" so you don't have people
> running around believing what they're doing is safe.  I'd hope they'd be smart
> enough to consult with a lawyer, but it's probably better to just not spread
> unsubstantiated rumor in the first place.  
> > 
> > --Tim
>
> Hi guys, I am one of the ZFS porting folks at FreeBSD.
>
> You might want to look at this site: http://www.sun.com/lawsuit/zfs/
>
> There are three main threatening Netapp patents mentioned:
> 5,819,292 - "copy on write"
> 7,174,352 - "filesystem snapshot"
> 6,857,001 - "writable snapshots"
>
> You can examine the documents at: http://www.sun.com/lawsuit/zfs/documents.jsp

And people should note that Netapp filed their patents starting from 1993. This 
is 5 years after I started to develop WOFS, which is copy on write. This still 
is 2 years after a working WOFS implementation has been shown by me at the 
Techische Universität Berlin and 2 years after I published my Dimplma thesis 
for WOFS.

The most important part of a COW filesystem is to invent a method to reliably 
retrieve the most recent super block. The related invention in WOFS is from 
1989.

As WOFS was designed for WORM media, all super blocks stay available for ever 
and as a result, each "stable sync state" in WOFS could be called a "filesystem 
snapshot" that is created without costs. Being able to mount a snapshot 
different from the most recent one would no be more than 10 additional lines of 
code and is a trivial non-patentable extra effort.

As every "stable sync state" in WOFS is is an "equal snapshot", there is no 
special state in the most recent sync state that prevents other sync states 
from being written too.


I cannot see any invention from Netapp. They just reimplement prior art.

In any case, this is 20 year old technology. Aren't patents something to 
protect new ideas?

Jörg

-- 
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   j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni)  
   joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: 
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Martin Matuska]

Tim Cook  cook.ms> writes:

> You are not a court of law, and that statement has not been tested.  It is
your opinion and nothing more.  I'd appreciate if every time you repeated that
statement, you'd preface it with "in my opinion" so you don't have people
running around believing what they're doing is safe.  I'd hope they'd be smart
enough to consult with a lawyer, but it's probably better to just not spread
unsubstantiated rumor in the first place.  
> 
> --Tim

Hi guys, I am one of the ZFS porting folks at FreeBSD.

You might want to look at this site: http://www.sun.com/lawsuit/zfs/

There are three main threatening Netapp patents mentioned:
5,819,292 - "copy on write"
7,174,352 - "filesystem snapshot"
6,857,001 - "writable snapshots"

You can examine the documents at: http://www.sun.com/lawsuit/zfs/documents.jsp

5,819,292:
This one as a final action by the U.S. Patent Office from 16.06.2009. In this
action almost all claims subject to reexamination were rejected by the Office
(due to anticipation), only claims 1, 21 and 22 were confirmed as patentable.
These claims are not significant for copy-on-write. So you can consider the
copy-on-write patent by Netapp rejected. With this document in your hands they
cannot expect winning a lawsuit against you on copy-on-write anymore as there
is not much from the patent left over.

7,174,352:
This patent has a non-final action rejecting all the claims due to
anticipation. There may exist a final action that confirms this, but its not
among the documents. If there is a final action, you can use any filesystem
that does snapshots without risking a lawsuit from Netapp. The non-final
action document a very strong asset in your hands, anyway :-)

6,857,001:
No documents for this patent at the site.

So you can use copy-on-write - as to the documents all relevant parts of the
patent are rejected.
Snapshots - the non-final action document is a good asset, but I don't know if
there is a final action document. This patent can be considered as "almost"
rejected.
Clones - no idea

But remember, this goes for ANY filesystems, this isn't only about ZFS.
So every filesystem doing snapshots or clones (btrfs?) should actually 
have a permission from Netapp as they involve their patents ;-)


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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Miles Nordin]

> "js" == Joerg Schilling  writes:

>> GPLv3 might help with NetApp <-> Oracle pact while CDDL does
>> not.  

js> GPLv3 does not help at all with NetApp as the CDDL already
js> includes a patent grant with the maximum possible
js> coverage.

AIUI CDDL makes a user safe from Sun's patents only.  If NetApp
contributed code under CDDL, then it would make users safe from NetApp
patents applying to code netapp contributed, but NetApp didn't
contribute any code so it does nothing.  no surprises here: Sun tries
to prevent competitors from making poison contributions, which is
something we should all do but is ``making the implicit grant
explicit''.

GPLv3 was a response to the patent pact made between Novell and
Microsoft, which if it had worked would have made Linux unfree and
given control of it to Microsoft and Novell, because one would need to
buy a license from Novell to use Linux, and Microsoft could have
participated in nsetting terms for that license whoucl could be quite
elaborate like when RSA forced people to use the RSAREF library
implementation of RSA to benefit from the limited patent grant, so
these patent licenses have been used in the past not only to charge
people who have source but also to take away software freedom from
people who have source---their elaborateness can become really
nefarious.  The GPLv3 attempted-protection mechanism is: if Novell
negotiates any patent indemnity, it must apply to all users not just
Novell's users.  This is exactly what we should want to stay free in
the shadow of the NetApp <-> Oracle deal, but I don't understand the
legal mechanism that accomplishes it.  However I don't see anything
remotely like this in CDDL and am pretty sure although not 100% sure
that I don't see it because it isn't there.

Unfortunately I do not understand it further, and I'm trying to limit
the number of times I repeat myself, so welcome back to my killfile
and please feel free to take the last word, but I'll only point out
that I feel my understanding is more thorough than yours, Joerg, yet
you are more certain your understanding is complete than I am of mine
being complete, which is a big warning-sign to anyone who wants to
take your blanket assertions as the end of the matter.

js>  The interesting thing however is that the FSF
js> (before the GPLv3 exists) claimed that the CDDL is a bad
js> license _because_ of it's patent defense claims. Now the FSF
js> does the same as the CDDL ;-)

If we are debating the merits of the backing organizations rather than
the licenses themselves, then I think the more interesting thing is
that Sun enticed a bunch of developers to trust their stewardship of
the project by sassigning copyright to Sun, then got bought by Oracle
and became incapable of upholding their moral commitment and changed
the license to ``no source'', plucs ``no commercial use of binaries,
no publishing benchmarks,'' and a bunch of other completely crazy
unfree boilerplate software oppression.   Your point, if it even
survives an unmudddled understanding of the true patent clauses,
vanishes next to that reversal.

but merits of backing organization is relevant for deciding about
assigning your copytright to another or about including/striking the
``or any later version'' GPL clause.  

The interaction between licenses and patents can be discussed apart
from reputation, and probably should be otherwise I would say ``nobody
use CDDL because it is backed by Oracle,'' but I don't say that.

js> You are obviously wrong here: The GPLv3 is definitevely
js> incompatible with the GPLv2 and most software does _not_
js> include the "or any later clause" by intention.

And you are writing in bad faith, uninformed, and in sentences that
aren't internally consistent: GPLv2 with the clause is compatible with
GPLv3 by upgrade, so it's not ``definitively'' incompatible.  The
official FSF-published version of GPLv2 does include the clause, so it
would be ``by design'' compatible even if almost everyone struck the
clause as you wrongly claim.  And while it's overwhelmingly important
that Linux kernel does strike the clause, still it is flatly untrue
that ``most'' software does not include the clause: I gave examples
that do include the clause (gcc and gnu libc and grub and all other
FSF projects) while you have no examples at all, but there is no need
to debate that since anyone can STFW instead of relying on a
consistently unreliable party such as yourself.


js> OK, you just verified that you are just a troll. We need to
js> stop the discussion here.

Did you miss the part where I said SFLC (authors of GPLv3) and Sun
both advise that projects obtain copyright assignment from all
developers?  that this is normal, and probably a good idea?  If so,
you probably also missed the examples of good and bad consequences of
assignment in the past?  and the middle-ground offered by the ``or any
later version'' clause?

I am not really trolling so

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Frank Cusack
> 
> >> "Claiming you'd start paying for Solaris if they gave you ZFS for free
> >> in Linux is absolutely ridiculous."
> >
> > *Start* paying?  You clearly have NO idea what it costs to run Solaris
in
> > a production environment with support.
> 
> In my experience, it's less than RedHat.  Also TCO is less since Solaris
> offers more to begin with.

Guys...   The discussion of whether or not ZFS is open source moving forward
has long since been concluded.  Of course, please feel free to discuss
anything you like, but maybe you want to start a new thread to argue about
whether solaris is better than redhat, or GPL is legally significant and
blah blah blah, and so forth?

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Joerg Schilling]

Frank Cusack  wrote:

> On 12/16/10 11:32 AM +0100 Joerg Schilling wrote:
> >  Note that while there existist
> > numerous papers  from lawyers that consistently explain which parts of
> > the GPLv2 are violating  US law and thus are void,
>
> Can you elaborate?

See: http://www.osscc.net/en/gpl.html for a list.

e.g. the papers from Lawrence Rosen, Tom Gordon  and Lothar Determan.

Jörg

-- 
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Frank Cusack]

On 12/16/10 11:32 AM +0100 Joerg Schilling wrote:

 Note that while there existist
numerous papers  from lawyers that consistently explain which parts of
the GPLv2 are violating  US law and thus are void,


Can you elaborate?
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Frank Cusack]

On 12/16/10 9:11 AM -0500 Linder, Doug wrote:

The only thing I'll add is that I, as I said, I really don't care at all
about licenses.


Then you have no room to complain or even suggest a specific license!


 When it comes to licenses, to me (and, I suspect, the
vast majority of other OSS users), "GPL" is "synonymous with "open
source".  Is that correct?  No.  Am I aware that plenty of other licenses
exist?  Yes.  Is the issue important?  Sure.


Agreed.


 Do I have time or interest
to worry about niggly little details?  No.


Well the problem with licenses is that they are decidedly NOT niggly
little details.  You should consider re-evaluating what you have time
or interest for, if you care about the things you say (such as maximum
and flexible use of the products you are using).


 All I want is to be able to
use the best technology in the ways that are most useful to me without
artificial restrictions.  Anything that advances that, I'm for.


CDDL is close to that, much closer than GPL.

-frank
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Frank Cusack]

On 12/16/10 10:24 AM -0500 Linder, Doug wrote:

Tim Cook wrote:


"Claiming you'd start paying for Solaris if they gave you ZFS for free
in Linux is absolutely ridiculous."


*Start* paying?  You clearly have NO idea what it costs to run Solaris in
a production environment with support.


In my experience, it's less than RedHat.  Also TCO is less since Solaris
offers more to begin with.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Joerg Schilling]

Miles Nordin  wrote:

> > "js" == Joerg Schilling 
>   delivered the following alternate reality of idealogical
>   partisan hackery:
>
> js> GPLv3 does not give you anything you don't have from CDDL
> js> also.
>
> I think this is wrong.  The patent indemnification is totally
> different: AIUI the CDDL makes the implicit patent license explicit
> and that's it, but GPLv3 does that and goes further by driving in a
> wedge against patent pacts, somehow.

Both licenses do the same using different words. They both require contributors 
to give a royalty-free patent usage permission for all patents owned or 
controlled by the contributor in case they are used by the contributed code.

More is not possible. If you believe there is a noticable difference, please 
explain.


> GPLv3 might help with NetApp <-> Oracle pact while CDDL does not.
> This is a big difference illustrated through a familiar and very
> relevant example---not sure how to do better than that, Joerg!

GPLv3 does not help at all with NetApp as the CDDL already includes a patent 
grant with the maximum possible coverage. The interesting thing however is that 
the FSF (before the GPLv3 exists) claimed that the CDDL is a bad license 
_because_ of it's patent defense claims. Now the FSF does the same as the 
CDDL ;-)


> js> The GPLv3 is intentionally incompatible with the GPLv2
>
> This is definitely wrong, if you dig into the detail more.  Most GPLv2
> programs include a clause ``or any later version'', so adding one
> GPLv3 file to them just makes the whole project GPLv3, and there's no
> real problem.

You are obviously wrong here: The GPLv3 is definitevely incompatible with the 
GPLv2 and most software does _not_ include the "or any later clause" by 
intention.

> Obviously this clause only makes sense if you trust the FSF, which I
> do so I include it, but Linus apparently didn't trust them so he
> struck the clause long ago.

Given the fact that the FSF is the biggest license/Copyright violater on code 
taken from the cdrtools project, it should be obvious that you cannot trust 
the FSF. 

> so GPLv3 and Apache are compatible while GPLv2 and GPLv3 are not, that
> is true and is designed.  However GPLv2 was also designed to be
> upgradeable, which was absolutely the FSF's intent, to achieve
> compatibility, and they have done so with all their old projects like
> gcc and gnu libc.

The Apache-2.0 license grants sub-licensing, so it is one of the few licenses 
where the end-user or redistributor may not always get all permissions from the 
original author. If you however like to combine Apache-2.0 code with GPL code 
and do this acording to the rules written in the GPL, this is still not 
possible as the Apache-2.0 license does not give you the permission to change 
the license for code from other contributors.

As a result, the only way to combine Apache-2.0 code with GPL code still is to
declare the resultant work a "collective work". So there is no difference from 
combining CDDL code with GPL code.

> The usual way to accomplish license upgradeability is to delegate your
> copyright to the organization you trust to know the difference between
> ``upgrade'' and ``screw you over.''  That's the method Sun forced upon
> people who had to sign contributor agreements, and is also the method
> SFLC advises most new free software projects to adopt: don't let
> individual developers keep licenses, because they'll become obstinate
> ossified illogical partisan farts like Joerg, or will not answer
> email, so you can never ever change the license.

OK, you just verified that you are just a troll. We need to stop the discussion 
here.

Jörg

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Erik Trimble]

On Thu, 2010-12-16 at 14:31 +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Erik Trimble  wrote:
> 
> > The last update I see to the ZFS public tree is 29 Oct 2010.   Which, I 
> > *think*, is about the time that the fork for the Solaris 11 Express 
> > snapshot was taken.
> 
> Do you really see such an update?
> 
> The last time I tried, the source was frozen on August 18th 2010.
> 
> Jörg
> 

Nope, Casper and Robert were correct. I was looking at the timestamps on
the files, not the internal date on the files.

Last update looks to be from b147, NOT b151.

:-(

The Oct timeframe is correct for when the b151 snapshot (the basis for
Solaris 11 Express) was taken, but the source doesn't appear to have
been pushed publicly since August (b147).

-- 
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop:  usca22-317
Phone:  x67195
Santa Clara, CA
Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Miles Nordin]

> "ld" == Linder, Doug  writes:

ld> This list is for ZFS discussion.  There are plenty of other
ld> places for License Wars and IP discussion.

Did you miss the part where ZFS was forked by a license change?  Did
you miss Solaris Express 11 coming out with no source?  Do you not
understand everyone is looking for a place to get maintenance on their
zpools without getting screwed over?  and that whatever few people not
too disgusted to walk away, like pjd and NetBSD and kqinfotech and so
on, must worry about where to commit their patches and under what
license they may use, or at least ``continue delegating to Sun, or
stop?''  How can yuo call this OT at this point?

ld> I really don't care at all about licenses.

I think you should start caring, because they affect you.  

Obviously your care is up to you, but you're also the one who offered
to discuss it!

ld> Folks, I very much did not intend to start, nor do I want to
ld> participate in or perpetuate, any religious flame wars.

yeah, but you're creating more drama by trying to cut off drama than
you would by just letting people discuss.  Sometimes these threads of
``excuse me but you are a flamer / no U / folks folks attention please
everyone calm down / woah woah woah didn't mean to get your panties in
a bunch'' is the real content-free post, not the actual disagreement
which has some content in it.

ld> Is the issue important?  Sure.  Do I have time or interest to
ld> worry about niggly little details?  No.

Then you're lazy.  Don't demand that others be lazy, too, because
you're not only too lazy to care, but you're too lazy to skip their
messages that you don't care about!

ld> personally very geeky about seems *hugely* important and you
ld> can't understand why others don't see that.  Maybe it bugs you
ld> when people use "GPL" to mean "open source", but the fact is
ld> that lots and lots of people do.  It bugs me when Stallman
ld> tries to get everyone to use the ridiculous "GNU/Linux", as if
ld> anyone would ever say that.  It bugs me when people say "I
ld> *could* care less."  But I live with these things.

If you live with them, why not live with them quietly?  Listing what
you don't care about is a lot less useful than talking about things
that only some people care about.  I think virtually no one cares to
keep track of what unique things you don't care about, yet confusingly
you seem to present your post as a way to avoid useless discussion.
You already know others DO care about it, so?

ld> I regret and apologize for my callous disregard in casually
ld> tossing around a clearly incendiary term like "GPL".

no problem!  But if you really regret it then you won't mind when you
do it again and get corrected again.


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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Miles Nordin]

> "ld" == Linder, Doug  writes:

ld> Very nice.  So why isn't it in Fedora (for example)?

I think it's slow and unstable?  To me it's not clear yet whether it
will be the first thing in the Linux world that's stable and has
zfs-like capability.  If ZFS were GPL it probably would have been,
though.

and I think I needed many other things from Solaris like zones,
COMSTAR, IB, so I'll be trying to get those on Linux too before I can
finally ditch these Solaris machines.  so, at the time all those
things are working, what will the best Linux filesystem be?  maybe
ZFS.

ld> I'll believe it when I see it in a big Linux distribution,
ld> supported like any other FS, and I can use it in production.
ld> Until then, it doesn't exist.

yes.

but it is not the license exactly that's keeping it out.  I think the
license is just annoying some of the Linux developers enough that they
prefer to spend their effort elsewhere.  ex., OpenBSD is also refusing
to accept ZFS because of license, but in their case it is probably
``because we are forced to give source and don't want to''.  I agree
some of the haggling is stupid, but with all these jackmoves
everywhere, saying ``I don't understand all this crap and want to
code, so give me a license with a track record I can see, not the
Dynacorp Public Goofylicense or something like that,'' is not a
totally stupid position.  I do wish people would do more than just
code and try harder to learn the actual license details, though.


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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Miles Nordin]

> "js" == Joerg Schilling 
  delivered the following alternate reality of idealogical
  partisan hackery:

js> GPLv3 does not give you anything you don't have from CDDL
js> also.

I think this is wrong.  The patent indemnification is totally
different: AIUI the CDDL makes the implicit patent license explicit
and that's it, but GPLv3 does that and goes further by driving in a
wedge against patent pacts, somehow.

GPLv3 might help with NetApp <-> Oracle pact while CDDL does not.
This is a big difference illustrated through a familiar and very
relevant example---not sure how to do better than that, Joerg!

js> The GPLv3 is intentionally incompatible with the GPLv2

This is definitely wrong, if you dig into the detail more.  Most GPLv2
programs include a clause ``or any later version'', so adding one
GPLv3 file to them just makes the whole project GPLv3, and there's no
real problem.

Obviously this clause only makes sense if you trust the FSF, which I
do so I include it, but Linus apparently didn't trust them so he
struck the clause long ago.

so GPLv3 and Apache are compatible while GPLv2 and GPLv3 are not, that
is true and is designed.  However GPLv2 was also designed to be
upgradeable, which was absolutely the FSF's intent, to achieve
compatibility, and they have done so with all their old projects like
gcc and gnu libc.

The usual way to accomplish license upgradeability is to delegate your
copyright to the organization you trust to know the difference between
``upgrade'' and ``screw you over.''  That's the method Sun forced upon
people who had to sign contributor agreements, and is also the method
SFLC advises most new free software projects to adopt: don't let
individual developers keep licenses, because they'll become obstinate
ossified illogical partisan farts like Joerg, or will not answer
email, so you can never ever change the license.

FSF gives you this extra ``or any later version'' option to use, which
is handy if you trust them to make your software more free in the
future yet also want to keep your copyright so YOU can make it less
free in the future, if you decide you want to.  seems only fair to me,
so long as you really did write all of it.


GPLv3 is about as incompatible with GPLv2 as ``not giving any source
at all'' is incompatible with CDDL.  ie, if you delegated your
copyright to Sun and contributed under CDDL, Sun has now ``upgraded''
your license to no-source-at-all, which is obviously CDDL-incompatible
and by-design.

The CDDL of course could never include an ``or any later version''
clause because it would be completely stupid: there's no reason to
trust Sun/Oracle.  IMHO this is a huge advantage of GPL---it's very
easy to future-proof your work, provided you trust the FSF, which I'm
sure Joerg does not, but many people do which is lucky for us who do.
Joerg doesn't have anyone left to trust: if you donated your copyright
to Sun to try to future-proof it against unexpected needed license
changes, you're now screwed out of your original intent because
they've altered the terms of the deal you thought you were getting.
And if your clan of developers won't collectively trust anyone, you
also lose because if your understanding of patents evolves in the
future, your large old projects who refused-to-trust (like Linux!) are
stuck with patent robustness much worse than it needs to be.


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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Anurag Agarwal]

Hi,

For any one interested in ZFS on linux, We have ported ZFS to linux, and
will be providing support for it at reasonable cost.

Check it out at zfs.kqinfotech.com.

So let me know if any one is interested in it.

Regards,
Anurag.

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 8:54 PM, Linder, Doug
wrote:

>  Tim Cook wrote:
>
>
>
> >"Claiming you'd start paying for Solaris if they gave you ZFS for free in
> Linux is absolutely ridiculous."
>
>
>
> **Start** paying?  You clearly have NO idea what it costs to run Solaris
> in a production environment with support.  For what we pay it seems like
> they should send us a Solaris developer to sit at our company full-time and
> bring us coffee when he isn't making custom changes for us.  And he could
> have a secretary.
>
>
>
> > "The problem is, what you're saying amounts to: I want Oracle to port ZFS
> to linux because I don't want to pay for it.  I don't want to pay Oracle for
> it, and I want to be able to use it any way I see fit."
>
>
>
> You're just putting words in my mouth.  I never said "I don't want to pay
> for it."  If Oracle released "ZFS for Linux" as a product and charged money
> for it, I'd be very willing to consider it - if it were reasonably priced.
> Which it wouldn't be, it would likely cost $8,735 – per processor!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Learn more about Merchant Link at www.merchantlink.com.
>
> THIS MESSAGE IS CONFIDENTIAL.  This e-mail message and any attachments are 
> proprietary and confidential information intended only for the use of the 
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> print, distribute, or copy this message or any attachments.  If you have 
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Linder, Doug]

Tim Cook wrote:

>"Claiming you'd start paying for Solaris if they gave you ZFS for free in 
>Linux is absolutely ridiculous."

*Start* paying?  You clearly have NO idea what it costs to run Solaris in a 
production environment with support.  For what we pay it seems like they should 
send us a Solaris developer to sit at our company full-time and bring us coffee 
when he isn't making custom changes for us.  And he could have a secretary.

> "The problem is, what you're saying amounts to: I want Oracle to port ZFS to 
> linux because I don't want to pay for it.  I don't want to pay Oracle for it, 
> and I want to be able to use it any way I see fit."

You're just putting words in my mouth.  I never said "I don't want to pay for 
it."  If Oracle released "ZFS for Linux" as a product and charged money for it, 
I'd be very willing to consider it - if it were reasonably priced.  Which it 
wouldn't be, it would likely cost $8,735 - per processor!







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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Tim Cook]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 8:11 AM, Linder, Doug
wrote:

> Joerg Schilling wrote:
>
> > The reason for not being able to use ZFS under Linux is not the license
> > used by ZFS but the missing will for integration.
> >
> > Several lawyers explained already why adding ZFS to the Linux would
> > just create a "collective work" that is permitted by the GPL.
>
> Folks, I very much did not intend to start, nor do I want to participate in
> or perpetuate, any religious flame wars.  This list is for ZFS discussion.
>  There are plenty of other places for License Wars and IP discussion.
>
> The only thing I'll add is that I, as I said, I really don't care at all
> about licenses.  When it comes to licenses, to me (and, I suspect, the vast
> majority of other OSS users), "GPL" is "synonymous with "open source".  Is
> that correct?  No.  Am I aware that plenty of other licenses exist?  Yes.
>  Is the issue important?  Sure.  Do I have time or interest to worry about
> niggly little details?  No.  All I want is to be able to use the best
> technology in the ways that are most useful to me without artificial
> restrictions.  Anything that advances that, I'm for.
>
> This is one of those geek things where the topic you're personally very
> geeky about seems *hugely* important and you can't understand why others
> don't see that.  Maybe it bugs you when people use "GPL" to mean "open
> source", but the fact is that lots and lots of people do.  It bugs me when
> Stallman tries to get everyone to use the ridiculous "GNU/Linux", as if
> anyone would ever say that.  It bugs me when people say "I *could* care
> less."  But I live with these things.  People talk the way they talk.  If
> you're into IP issues and OSS licensing, that's great.  But don't be
> surprised if other people aren't as fascinated with the dirty details of IP
> law as you are.  Most people find the law unutterably boring.
>
> So, feel free to discuss this as much as you want, but leave me out of it.
>  I regret and apologize for my callous disregard in casually tossing around
> a clearly incendiary term like "GPL".
>
> Everyone have a great day! :)
>




The problem is, what you're saying amounts to:
I want Oracle to port ZFS to linux because I don't want to pay for it.  I
don't want to pay Oracle for it, and I want to be able to use it any way I
see fit.

What is in it for Oracle?  "Goodwill" doesn't pay the bills.  Claiming you'd
start paying for Solaris if they gave you ZFS for free in Linux is
absolutely ridiculous.  If the best response you can come up with is
"goodwill", I suggest wishing in one hand and shitting in the other because
there's no way Oracle is going to give away such a  valuable piece of code
for no monetary compensation.  *AT BEST* I could see them releasing a binary
for OEL only that they won't be sharing with anyone else.

--Tim
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Joerg Schilling]

"C. Bergström"  wrote:

> lalala..

-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletubbies

Jörg

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Linder, Doug]

> lalala..
> 
> http://zfsonlinux.org/

Very nice.  So why isn't it in Fedora (for example)?

I'll believe it when I see it in a big Linux distribution, supported like any 
other FS, and I can use it in production.  Until then, it doesn't exist.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Linder, Doug]

Joerg Schilling wrote:

> The reason for not being able to use ZFS under Linux is not the license
> used by ZFS but the missing will for integration.
> 
> Several lawyers explained already why adding ZFS to the Linux would
> just create a "collective work" that is permitted by the GPL.

Folks, I very much did not intend to start, nor do I want to participate in or 
perpetuate, any religious flame wars.  This list is for ZFS discussion.  There 
are plenty of other places for License Wars and IP discussion.

The only thing I'll add is that I, as I said, I really don't care at all about 
licenses.  When it comes to licenses, to me (and, I suspect, the vast majority 
of other OSS users), "GPL" is "synonymous with "open source".  Is that correct? 
 No.  Am I aware that plenty of other licenses exist?  Yes.  Is the issue 
important?  Sure.  Do I have time or interest to worry about niggly little 
details?  No.  All I want is to be able to use the best technology in the ways 
that are most useful to me without artificial restrictions.  Anything that 
advances that, I'm for.

This is one of those geek things where the topic you're personally very geeky 
about seems *hugely* important and you can't understand why others don't see 
that.  Maybe it bugs you when people use "GPL" to mean "open source", but the 
fact is that lots and lots of people do.  It bugs me when Stallman tries to get 
everyone to use the ridiculous "GNU/Linux", as if anyone would ever say that.  
It bugs me when people say "I *could* care less."  But I live with these 
things.  People talk the way they talk.  If you're into IP issues and OSS 
licensing, that's great.  But don't be surprised if other people aren't as 
fascinated with the dirty details of IP law as you are.  Most people find the 
law unutterably boring.

So, feel free to discuss this as much as you want, but leave me out of it.  I 
regret and apologize for my callous disregard in casually tossing around a 
clearly incendiary term like "GPL".

Everyone have a great day! :)
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[C. Bergström]

The reason for not being able to use ZFS under Linux is not the license used by 
ZFS but the missing will for integration.


Several lawyers explained already why adding ZFS to the Linux would just create 
a "collective work" that is permitted by the GPL.
  

lalala..

http://zfsonlinux.org/
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Joerg Schilling]

"Linder, Doug"  wrote:

> > > Why do you want them to "GPL" ZFS?  In what way would that save you
> > annoyance?
> > 
> > I actually think Doug was trying to say he wished Oracle would open the
> > development and make the source code open-sourced, not necessarily
> > GPL'd.
>
> Yes.  I don't really care which specific license it is, as long as it allows 
> ZFS to go into Linux.
>
> How would it save me annoyance?  I find it *hugely* annoying that I can't use 
> ZFS in Linux, and that a huge parallel effort (the horribly-named "btrfs") is 
> required to duplicate something that already exists in a stable, powerful 
> incarnation.  And even that will be several years at least before it's even 
> close to "done" enough for people to trust it in production.

The reason for not being able to use ZFS under Linux is not the license used by 
ZFS but the missing will for integration.

Several lawyers explained already why adding ZFS to the Linux would just create 
a "collective work" that is permitted by the GPL.

Jörg

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Linder, Doug]

> I'm very happy it's not in linux since "linux" is
> usually a low quality pile of crap cobbled together.  If you're not
> writing the code to zfs or btrfs then you don't get a vote and just
> making noise on a public mailing list
> 
> How about doing some work instead of just complaining about things that
> are outside of our control..

Dude, you need to drink less coffee!

(avoids entering into a flame war)
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[C. Bergström]

Linder, Doug wrote:

Why do you want them to "GPL" ZFS?  In what way would that save you
  

annoyance?

I actually think Doug was trying to say he wished Oracle would open the
development and make the source code open-sourced, not necessarily
GPL'd.



Yes.  I don't really care which specific license it is, as long as it allows 
ZFS to go into Linux.
  
I'm very happy it's not in linux since "linux" is 
usually a low quality pile of crap cobbled together.  If you're not 
writing the code to zfs or btrfs then you don't get a vote and just 
making noise on a public mailing list


How about doing some work instead of just complaining about things that 
are outside of our control..

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Linder, Doug]

> > Why do you want them to "GPL" ZFS?  In what way would that save you
> annoyance?
> 
> I actually think Doug was trying to say he wished Oracle would open the
> development and make the source code open-sourced, not necessarily
> GPL'd.

Yes.  I don't really care which specific license it is, as long as it allows 
ZFS to go into Linux.

How would it save me annoyance?  I find it *hugely* annoying that I can't use 
ZFS in Linux, and that a huge parallel effort (the horribly-named "btrfs") is 
required to duplicate something that already exists in a stable, powerful 
incarnation.  And even that will be several years at least before it's even 
close to "done" enough for people to trust it in production.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Joerg Schilling]

Erik Trimble  wrote:

> The last update I see to the ZFS public tree is 29 Oct 2010.   Which, I 
> *think*, is about the time that the fork for the Solaris 11 Express 
> snapshot was taken.

Do you really see such an update?

The last time I tried, the source was frozen on August 18th 2010.

Jörg

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> From: Garrett D'Amore [mailto:garr...@nexenta.com]
> Sent: Friday, December 10, 2010 10:47 AM
> 
> We have ZFS version 28.  Whether we ever get another open source update
> of ZFS from *Oracle* is at this point doubtful.  However, I will point out
that

Forgive me for swinging the conversation back to the original question for a
moment.  Is ZFS open source?
sol11exp has zpool 31
nexenta has zpool 28
openindiana has zpool 28
solaris 10u9 has zpool 22

Since sol11exp has been out for a while now, and it's been several months
since 28 was the current release...  And yet 28 is still the current open
source release ...  It seems that at least the latest versions of ZFS are
closed source.  There's no saying what Oracle will do in the future, but I
don't advise holding your breath while you wait for something higher than
zpool 28.

I imagine a world where Dell and HP and IBM will sponsor openindiana, and
hire developers away from oracle (or just hire developers in general) to
continue the open source branch developments.  Compete against netapp and
oracle seriously.  Certify openindiana on their hardware in earnest.  But
there's one obstacle I don't see any overcoming ... Oracle is the only
company who has already gotten immunity against netapp lawsuit.  So if any
big companies are going to further the open source branches, they will
either have to acquire immunity somehow, or calculate the cost of lawsuit.
They'll also have to watch Oracle's patents with a hawkeye, and ensure not
to tread near, because you know what Oracle will do.

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Joerg Schilling]

Bob Friesenhahn  wrote:

> These reasons don't make CDDL incompatible with GPL.  GPL is 
> compatible with any license which is at least as permissive as itself. 
> GPLv2 only requires that the recipient be able to receive all of the 
> source code under terms which allow building new binaries (including 
> based on modified source code) and distributed under similar terms. 
> There might be some other reason that CDDL could be considered 
> incompatible with GPL, but not the reasons you mentioned.

The FSF claims that running FSF software on top of OpenSolaris is permitted, so 
it seems that the FSF does not see any incompatibility from combining GPL 
software with e.g. CDDL libraries.

Jörg

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Joerg Schilling]

Miles Nordin  wrote:

> > "bf" == Bob Friesenhahn  writes:
>
> bf> Perhaps it is better for Linux if it is GPLv2, but probably
> bf> not if it is GPLv3.
>
> That's my understanding: GPLv3 is the one you would need to preserve
> software freedom under deals like NetApp<->Oracle patent pact,

GPLv3 does not give you anything you don't have from CDDL also.


> but GPLv3 is not compatible with Linux because the kernel is GPLv2 but
> stupidly/stubbornly deleted the ``or any later version'' language,
> meaning GPLv3 is not any more Linux-compatible than CDDL.

The GPLv3 is intentionally incompatible with the GPLv2 and this seems to be 
indeed a stupud decision..but this is a decision made by Mr. Stallman.

Jörg

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Joerg Schilling]

Miles Nordin  wrote:

>  * when do the CDDL patent protections apply?  to deals between Oracle
>and Netapp?  or is it only protection against Oracle patents?  I
>think the latter, but then, which Oracle patents?  Suppose:

The CDDL gives patent grants to all patents that relate to code code published
by the patent owner. This is the maximum possible patent protection that is 
possible by a OS license.


>  * AIUI Oracle has distributed grub with zfs patches, and grub is
>GPLv3.  Is this true?  If so, GPLv3 includes stuff to extend patent
>deals, which was added becuase GPLv3 was written under the ominous
>spectre of the Microsoft-Novell Linux indemnification deal.  Does
>GPLv3 grub extend any of the Netapp deal to those patented
>algorithms which are used within grub?  The GPLv3 is supposed to do
>some of this, but I don't know how much.

The GPLv3 does not give you more protection that the CDDL does and the GPLv3 is 
a really problematic license. Note that while there existist numerous papers 
from lawyers that consistently explain which parts of the GPLv2 are violating 
US law and thus are void, there is noting like that for GPLv3 already, so you 
live in uncertainty. As an important part in the GPLv3 is written in a very 
ambiguous way, GPLv3 seems to carry a high risk of being sued.

Jörg

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

In fact, that's the reason why CDDL is not GPL compatible.  Because 
GPL is not compatible with other open-source licenses if the other 
licenses grant too many permissions to the recipient. 
Specifically:


GPL prohibits the recipient from static linking with a closed-source 
product, or using closed-source build scripts.  CDDL does not make 
that restriction.  CDDL permits the recipient to build the CDDL code 
into a proprietary product, and only the original CDDL code and 
modifications to it must be open source and available under CDDL. 
All the other stuff that gets linked, and the build process itself, 
are permitted to be closed source.  This is too permissive to be 
compatible with GPL.


These reasons don't make CDDL incompatible with GPL.  GPL is 
compatible with any license which is at least as permissive as itself. 
GPLv2 only requires that the recipient be able to receive all of the 
source code under terms which allow building new binaries (including 
based on modified source code) and distributed under similar terms. 
There might be some other reason that CDDL could be considered 
incompatible with GPL, but not the reasons you mentioned.


I think that the reason that Linux does not want to pick up zfs is 
more a matter of control and philosophy than actual license 
incompatibility.


Bob
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Linder, Doug
> 
> But it
> sure would be nice if they spared everyone a lot of effort and annoyance and
> just GPL'd ZFS.  

If you just mean it should be open source, under CDDL that it's been using, 
then I agree whole heartedly.  If you literally mean GPL, I disagree 
wholeheartedly.  

I'm trying to find a way to say this without provoking a CDDL vs GPL flame war, 
but it seems near impossible.  Long story short, GPL is more restrictive, and 
grants fewer freedoms to whoever receives a copy of the product.

Neither CDDL, nor GPL, nor any other license would bind Oracle any stronger.  
In any case, they grant rights to the world, which are irrevokable.  In any 
case, Oracle and only Oracle is permitted to release future developments under 
different terms, or not released at all.  They're the copyright holder, they 
can still do whatever they want, regardless of what rights they give you.  The 
selection of CDDL vs GPL vs others is entirely a question of which rights they 
are willing to grant you.  CDDL grants you more rights than GPL.

In fact, that's the reason why CDDL is not GPL compatible.  Because GPL is not 
compatible with other open-source licenses if the other licenses grant too many 
permissions to the recipient.  Specifically:  

GPL prohibits the recipient from static linking with a closed-source product, 
or using closed-source build scripts.  CDDL does not make that restriction.  
CDDL permits the recipient to build the CDDL code into a proprietary product, 
and only the original CDDL code and modifications to it must be open source and 
available under CDDL.  All the other stuff that gets linked, and the build 
process itself, are permitted to be closed source.  This is too permissive to 
be compatible with GPL.

Again, none of those restrictions apply to the copyright holder.  Oracle can do 
whatever they want, and link and modify with closed-source anything they want, 
regardless of what rights they grant you.

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Miles Nordin]

> "bf" == Bob Friesenhahn  writes:

bf> Perhaps it is better for Linux if it is GPLv2, but probably
bf> not if it is GPLv3.

That's my understanding: GPLv3 is the one you would need to preserve
software freedom under deals like NetApp<->Oracle patent pact,

 http://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.html#patent-protection

but GPLv3 is not compatible with Linux because the kernel is GPLv2 but
stupidly/stubbornly deleted the ``or any later version'' language,
meaning GPLv3 is not any more Linux-compatible than CDDL.

however given how widely-used binary modules are to supposedly get
around the license incompatibility, many might consider the GPLv3
patent protections worth more than license compatibility, if your goal
is software freedom, or a predictable future for your business.


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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Ross Walker]

On Dec 15, 2010, at 6:48 PM, Bob Friesenhahn  
wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Dec 2010, Linder, Doug wrote:
> 
>> But it sure would be nice if they spared everyone a lot of effort and 
>> annoyance and just GPL'd ZFS.  I think the goodwill generated
> 
> Why do you want them to "GPL" ZFS?  In what way would that save you annoyance?

I actually think Doug was trying to say he wished Oracle would open the 
development and make the source code open-sourced, not necessarily GPL'd.

-Ross

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Wed, 15 Dec 2010, Erik Trimble wrote:


I, for one, would be astonished if they (Oracle) GPL'd the relevant
sections of code. It seems so out-of-character that I just can't wrap my
brain around it. 

That said, I'd also be unhappy if they GPL'd it.  I'd much rather just
have Oracle keep contributing to the codebase they have now, and keep
the community we've got interested. Which is at least reasonably


GPL is actually a rather restrictive license.  Perhaps it is better 
for Linux if it is GPLv2, but probably not if it is GPLv3.  It is 
really not good for anything *but* Linux.


Bob
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Wed, 15 Dec 2010, Linder, Doug wrote:

But it sure would be nice if they spared everyone a lot of effort 
and annoyance and just GPL'd ZFS.  I think the goodwill generated


Why do you want them to "GPL" ZFS?  In what way would that save you 
annoyance?


Bob
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Erik Trimble]

On Wed, 2010-12-15 at 15:05 -0500, Linder, Doug wrote:
> > > We won't know until after Oracle releases Solaris 11 whether or not
> > > they'll live up to their promise to open the source to ZFSv31.
>   Until > > Solaris 11 is released, there's really not much point in
>  debating it. > > And if they don't, it will be Sad, both in terms of
>  useful code not > being available to a wide community to review and
>  amend, as in terms > of Oracle not really getting the point about open
>  source development.
> 
> That's how I feel - it will just be sad if they don't.  There's no
>  point arguing or bickering or guessing.  They either will, or they
>  won't, do the right thing.  All we can do is hope.  It would be a real
>  shame if Oracle  didn't simply open source the code.  It's not as if
>  there are any trade secrets left - the technology is well known. 
>  After all, Sun published the guts and they can't put the genie back in
>  the lamp.  So the principles of ZFS can be duplicated.  But it sure
>  would be nice if they spared everyone a lot of effort and annoyance
>  and just GPL'd ZFS.  I think the goodwill generated would definitely
>  offset any minor losses.  I know that, as a person who's been a
>  Solaris admin for almost 20 years and not generally a big fan of
>  Oracle, it would certainly go a long way towards starting our new,
>  enforced relationship off on a better foot.
> 
> I have to say that given Oracle's track record I don't expect it.  I
>  fully expect them to lock it up as tight and proprietary as possible
>  and charge everyone as much as they can, because what's important is
>  The Last Penny On Earth.  But I'm hoping I'm wrong and being overly
>  pessimistic.
> 
> Doug Linder
> --

I, for one, would be astonished if they (Oracle) GPL'd the relevant
sections of code. It seems so out-of-character that I just can't wrap my
brain around it. 

That said, I'd also be unhappy if they GPL'd it.  I'd much rather just
have Oracle keep contributing to the codebase they have now, and keep
the community we've got interested. Which is at least reasonably
possible, if not probable. Personally, I'm happy that there are at
least /some/ things that *can't* be easily ported completely across the
*BSD, Solaris, HPUX, AIX, and Linux world.  I want a thriving
multi-flavored UNIX ecosystem where STANDARDS are important, and each
product has differentiation. Allowing everything to be sucked into Linux
devolves into the Tragedy of the Commons, and we end up with LESS
choice, and LESS innovation. 

Plus, it helps keep employed generalists like me, who know a good bit
about several OSes, but only so much about any one.  


[ObDisclaimer: I work for Oracle, but the opinions expressed herein are
solely my own, and contain no Oracle proprietary knowledge]

-- 
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop:  usca22-317
Phone:  x67195
Santa Clara, CA
Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Linder, Doug]

> > We won't know until after Oracle releases Solaris 11 whether or not
> > they'll live up to their promise to open the source to ZFSv31.  Until
> > Solaris 11 is released, there's really not much point in debating it.
> 
> And if they don't, it will be Sad, both in terms of useful code not
> being available to a wide community to review and amend, as in terms
> of Oracle not really getting the point about open source development.

That's how I feel - it will just be sad if they don't.  There's no point 
arguing or bickering or guessing.  They either will, or they won't, do the 
right thing.  All we can do is hope.  It would be a real shame if Oracle  
didn't simply open source the code.  It's not as if there are any trade secrets 
left - the technology is well known.  After all, Sun published the guts and 
they can't put the genie back in the lamp.  So the principles of ZFS can be 
duplicated.  But it sure would be nice if they spared everyone a lot of effort 
and annoyance and just GPL'd ZFS.  I think the goodwill generated would 
definitely offset any minor losses.  I know that, as a person who's been a 
Solaris admin for almost 20 years and not generally a big fan of Oracle, it 
would certainly go a long way towards starting our new, enforced relationship 
off on a better foot.

I have to say that given Oracle's track record I don't expect it.  I fully 
expect them to lock it up as tight and proprietary as possible and charge 
everyone as much as they can, because what's important is The Last Penny On 
Earth.  But I'm hoping I'm wrong and being overly pessimistic.

Doug Linder
--
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Darren J Moffat]

On 12/13/10 05:55 PM, Miles Nordin wrote:

+ Oracle publishes the promised yet-to-be-delivered zfs-crypto
  paper that's thorough enough to write a compatible implementation


It isn't yet the full paper but a lot of the on disk details are in my 
latest blog entry and all of the structs necessary for the on disk 
format are in the CTF data of the binaries.


http://blogs.sun.com/darren/entry/zfs_encryption_what_is_on

--
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Miles Nordin]

> "rs" == Robert Soubie  writes:

rs> Don't you forget that these companies also do much of their
rs> business in foreign countries (Europe, Asia) where software
rs> patenting is not allowed, 

dated myth.  software patents do exist in europe, and the EPO has
issued them.  Fewer are issued, and then there's more enforceability
question because unlke US, Europe has true federalism, but they still
exist.  If you google for 'software patents europe' there is stuff
explaining this on the first page.  

The EU patent debate seems to me about fighting attempts to globally
homogenize patents so that mountains of new patents would suddenly
become valid in Europe, and companies could jurisdiction-shop so you
would lose democratic control of the system's future.  It's definitely
not as simple or as good as ``preserve the status quo of no software
patents.''  The European status quo is already not good enough to be
safe.  It's just vastly better than the future WIPO ASSO wants to
bring you.

rs> where American law is not applicable,

Unfortunately I think American law is always applicable because it
seems patent law lets you sue almost anyone you like---the guy who
wrote it, the company that distributed it, the customer who bought it.
Only one has to be American, so American patents can be monetized with
few Americans involved.  When companies are conducting business
negotiations based on the threat of lawsuit rather than the result,
these suits don't have to get very far for the blackmail to translate
into ``value.''  If there are really European companies opting out of
the American market entirely because of patents, I think that's
fantastic, but it doesn't seem very plausible with software where you
want a big market more than anything.

rs> And do you really believe that this mailing list is only
rs> devoted to (US) Americans just because the products originated
rs> in the US, and the vernacular is English?

your rage against hegemony or imperialism or empire or whatever you
want to whine about this week is misplaced here: if you have a problem
with American attitude or with the political landscape of the world,
fine, that's smart, me too, whatever, but it's got zero to do with the
complication patents add to an Oracle-free ZFS.  Yeah it's really
American companies doing almost all this work (sorry, proud Europe!), 
but anyway being European doesn't mean you can ignore American patents
because even the (unlikely?) best case of suddenly losing the entire
American market while suffering no loss from a judgement is still bad
enough to kill a company.  What's on-topic is:

 * when do the CDDL patent protections apply?  to deals between Oracle
   and Netapp?  or is it only protection against Oracle patents?  I
   think the latter, but then, which Oracle patents?  Suppose:

   + Oracle patents something needed ZFS crypto

   + Oracle publishes the promised yet-to-be-delivered zfs-crypto
 paper that's thorough enough to write a compatible implementation

   + Oracle makes no further ZFS source releases, ever

   + Nexenta reimplements zfs-crypto and releases it CDDL with the
 rest of ZFS

   + Oracle sues Nexenta.  Oracle uses ``discovery'' to get exhaustive
 Nexenta customer list.  Oracle sues users of Nexenta.  Oracle
 monetizes ``Nexenta indemnification pack'' patent licenses and
 blackmails Nexenta's customers.

   CDDL was meant to create a space that appeared to be safe from the
   last point.  But CDDL patent stuff is no help here, I think?  so,
   in effect, patents reduce the software freedoms given by CDDL
   because, once you fork whatever partial source Oracle deems fit to
   distribute, you suffer increasing risk of stepping onto an
   (Oracle-placed!) patent landmine.

 * AIUI Oracle has distributed grub with zfs patches, and grub is
   GPLv3.  Is this true?  If so, GPLv3 includes stuff to extend patent
   deals, which was added becuase GPLv3 was written under the ominous
   spectre of the Microsoft-Novell Linux indemnification deal.  Does
   GPLv3 grub extend any of the Netapp deal to those patented
   algorithms which are used within grub?  The GPLv3 is supposed to do
   some of this, but I don't know how much.

   Is it extended only to grub users for use in grub, or can the
   patented stuff in grub be used anywhere by anyone who can get a
   copy of grub: download GPLv3 grub, then use CDDL ZFS in a Linux
   kmod with Oracle-provided immunity from any Netapp suit related to
   a ZFS patent used also in grub?  This sounds totally unrealistic to
   me, so I would guess the GPLv3 protection would be much less, but
   then what is it?  

   And anyway, though GPLv3 is meant to mandatorily extend private
   patent deals, how can any patent protection from the Netapp deal be
   extended when the deal is secret?  Don't you need some basis to
   force disclosure of the deal, and some way to define ``all relevant
   deals''?  If Oracle is defending themselves,

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Robert Soubie]

Le 13/12/2010 01:56, Tim Cook a écrit :
Yes, only the USA, which is where all relevant companies in this 
discussion do business. On a mailing list centered around a company 
founded in and doing business in the USA. So what exactly is your point?


Don't you forget that these companies also do much of their business in 
foreign countries (Europe, Asia) where software patenting is not 
allowed, where American law is not applicable, and where they have 
competitors?


And do you really believe that this mailing list is only devoted to (US) 
Americans just because the products originated in the US, and the 
vernacular is English?



--
Éditions de l'Âge d'Or — Stanley G. Weinbaum
http://www.lulu.com/robert_soubie

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Tim Cook]

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 6:41 PM, Bob Friesenhahn <
bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us> wrote:

> On Sat, 11 Dec 2010, Tim Cook wrote:
>
>  You are not a court of law, and that statement has not been tested.  It is
>> your opinion and nothing more.  I'd appreciate if every time you repeated
>> that statement, you'd preface it with "in my opinion" so you don't have
>> people running around believing what they're doing is safe.
>>
>
> Does someone have an opinion which is considered sound enough to not be
> considered "in my opinion"?  There is the US Supreme Court but their opinion
> only applies to the USA.
>
> Bob
>
>

Yes, only the USA, which is where all relevant companies in this discussion
do business.   On a mailing list centered around a company founded in and
doing business in the USA.  So what exactly is your point?

--Tim
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Sat, 11 Dec 2010, Tim Cook wrote:

You are not a court of law, and that statement has not been tested. 
 It is your opinion and nothing more.  I'd appreciate if every time 
you repeated that statement, you'd preface it with "in my opinion" 
so you don't have people running around believing what they're doing 
is safe.


Does someone have an opinion which is considered sound enough to not 
be considered "in my opinion"?  There is the US Supreme Court but 
their opinion only applies to the USA.


Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> From: Joerg Schilling [mailto:joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de]
> 
> > Problem is...  Oracle is now the only company in the world who's immune
> to netapp lawsuit over ZFS.  Even if IBM and Dell and HP wanted to band
> together and fund the open-source development of ZFS and openindiana...
> It's a real risk.
> 
> I don't believe that there is a significant risk as the NetApp patents are
> invalid because of prior art.

I agree, for that and many other reasons.  But it doesn't matter what I
think.  It only matters what Steve Jobs and others think, and it also
matters how much it would cost them to make their point in court.

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Dickon Hood]

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 00:17:08 +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:

: If you have substancial information on why NetApp may rightfully own a patent 
: that is essential for ZFS, I would be interested to get this information.

Trivial: the US patent system is fundamentally broken, so owning patents
on more or less anything is possible, whether inforceable or not.  The act
of defending against an invalid patent costs a fortune, so most entities
aren't willing to try.  Easier to avoid.

You know this, I'm sure.

-- 
Dickon Hood

Due to digital rights management, my .sig is temporarily unavailable.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.  We apologise for the
inconvenience in the meantime.

No virus was found in this outgoing message as I didn't bother looking.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Dickon Hood]

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 13:22:28 -0500, Miles Nordin wrote:

: The only thing missing is ZFS.  To me it looks like a good replacement
: for that is years away.  I'm not excited about ocfs, or about kernel
: module ZFS ports taking advantage of the Linus kmod ``interpretation''
: and the grub GPLv3 patent protection.

I'm of the opinion that that's a nice hack that Oracle won't object to,
right up until some other project decides to try and use it.  IANAL, don't
work for Oracle, never worked for Sun, and have no financial interest in
the outcome, and that's nothing but a wild guess, but I'd love someone to
take the codebase and produce something commercial with it.  I'll just
stand back and watch, from a safe distance.

It'll be worth it.  I'm sure I'd learn a lot.

-- 
Dickon Hood

Due to digital rights management, my .sig is temporarily unavailable.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.  We apologise for the
inconvenience in the meantime.

No virus was found in this outgoing message as I didn't bother looking.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Tim Cook]

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Joerg Schilling <
joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de> wrote:

> Tim Cook  wrote:
>
> > > I don't believe that there is a significant risk as the NetApp patents
> are
> > > invalid because of prior art.
> > >
> > >
> > You are not a court of law, and that statement has not been tested.  It
> is
> > your opinion and nothing more.  I'd appreciate if every time you repeated
> > that statement, you'd preface it with "in my opinion" so you don't have
> > people running around believing what they're doing is safe.  I'd hope
> they'd
> > be smart enough to consult with a lawyer, but it's probably better to
> just
> > not spread unsubstantiated rumor in the first place.
>
> If you have substancial information on why NetApp may rightfully own a
> patent
> that is essential for ZFS, I would be interested to get this information.
>
> Jörg
>
>

The initial filing was public record.  It has been posted on this mailing
list already, and you responded to those posts.  I'm not sure why you're
acting like you're oblivious to the case.  Regardless, I'll answer your
rhetorical question:
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20080529163415471

You BELIEVING the are wrong doesn't make it so, sorry.  Until it is settled
in a court of law, or the patent office invalidates their patents, you are
making unsubstantiated claims.

--Tim
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Joerg Schilling]

Tim Cook  wrote:

> > I don't believe that there is a significant risk as the NetApp patents are
> > invalid because of prior art.
> >
> >
> You are not a court of law, and that statement has not been tested.  It is
> your opinion and nothing more.  I'd appreciate if every time you repeated
> that statement, you'd preface it with "in my opinion" so you don't have
> people running around believing what they're doing is safe.  I'd hope they'd
> be smart enough to consult with a lawyer, but it's probably better to just
> not spread unsubstantiated rumor in the first place.

If you have substancial information on why NetApp may rightfully own a patent 
that is essential for ZFS, I would be interested to get this information.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
   j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni)  
   joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: 
http://schily.blogspot.com/
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Tim Cook]

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 3:08 PM, Joerg Schilling <
joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de> wrote:

> Edward Ned Harvey 
> wrote:
>
> > Problem is...  Oracle is now the only company in the world who's immune
> to netapp lawsuit over ZFS.  Even if IBM and Dell and HP wanted to band
> together and fund the open-source development of ZFS and openindiana...
>  It's a real risk.
>
> I don't believe that there is a significant risk as the NetApp patents are
> invalid because of prior art.
>
>
You are not a court of law, and that statement has not been tested.  It is
your opinion and nothing more.  I'd appreciate if every time you repeated
that statement, you'd preface it with "in my opinion" so you don't have
people running around believing what they're doing is safe.  I'd hope they'd
be smart enough to consult with a lawyer, but it's probably better to just
not spread unsubstantiated rumor in the first place.

--Tim
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Garrett D'Amore]

We have ZFS version 28.  Whether we ever get another open source update of ZFS 
from *Oracle* is at this point doubtful.  However, I will point out that there 
are a lot of former Oracle engineers, including both inventors of ZFS and many 
of the people who have worked on it over the years, who are no longer part of 
Oracle.  A number of those people have committed to working on ZFS related 
projects outside of Oracle, and I think ZFS will continue to evolve on its own 
in the open.

We'll have more to say on the matter early next year, I think.

-Original Message-
From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org on behalf of Edward Ned Harvey
Sent: Fri 12/10/2010 5:31 AM
To: zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org
Subject: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?
 
It's been a while since I last heard anybody say anything about this.
What's the latest version of publicly released ZFS?  Has oracle made it
closed-source moving forward?

 

Nexenta ... openindiana ... etc ... Are they all screwed?


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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Joerg Schilling]

Edward Ned Harvey  wrote:

> Problem is...  Oracle is now the only company in the world who's immune to 
> netapp lawsuit over ZFS.  Even if IBM and Dell and HP wanted to band together 
> and fund the open-source development of ZFS and openindiana...  It's a real 
> risk.

I don't believe that there is a significant risk as the NetApp patents are 
invalid because of prior art.

As mentioned before, The basic ideas of Copy On Write filesystems which include 
methods to find the most recent Filesystem SuperBlock in such a case and the 
derived methods to create "cheap" snapshots have not been invented by NetApp
but this happened years before NetApp came up with such a filesystem. I have 
no knowledge of systems that be older than my WOFS but I developed the WOFS 
basics in 1989 and made the implementation in 1989 and 1990, the Dimplma Thesis 
was published in May 1991.

Those basics from WAFS and ZFS are no more than a reimplementation of already 
existing ideas.

Jörg

-- 
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   j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni)  
   joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: 
http://schily.blogspot.com/
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
> boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Frank Van Damme
> 
> And if they don't, it will be Sad, both in terms of useful code not
> being available to a wide community to review and amend, as in terms
> of Oracle not really getting the point about open source development.

The thing that's really strange is ... BTRFS.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but 
oracle is and always has been a major contributor there?  'Course, for all I 
know, it could be sabotage.  ;-)  I mean ... BTRFS ... Is years away from what 
I would be comfortable deploying in production...

But if you've got a huge compute cluster, what are you supposed to do?  Pay for 
solaris on every one?  Of course that's ridiculous.  Of course in such a 
situation, you want the "centos" instead of the "rhel."  But what if there was 
a major closed-source feature unavailable in centos or openindiana?

Problem is...  Oracle is now the only company in the world who's immune to 
netapp lawsuit over ZFS.  Even if IBM and Dell and HP wanted to band together 
and fund the open-source development of ZFS and openindiana...  It's a real 
risk.

I guess, all things considered, the price for solaris is entirely reasonable 
when you're building a fileserver.  It's really just desktops and laptops and 
compute farms which suffer.

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Miles Nordin]

> "et" == Erik Trimble  writes:

et> In that case, can I be the first to say "PANIC!  RUN FOR THE
et> HILLS!"

Erik I thought most people already understood pushing to the public hg
gate had stopped at b147, hence Illumos and OpenIndiana.  it's not
that you're wrong, just that you should be in the hills by now if you
started out running.

the S11 Express release without source and with its new, more-onerous
license than SXCE is new dismal news, and the problems on other
projects and the waves of smart people leaving might be even more
dismal for opensolaris since in the past there was a lot of
integration and a lot of forward progress, but what you were
specifically asking about dates in hg was already included in the old
bad news AFAIK.  And anyway there was never complete source code, nor
source for all new work (drivers), nor source for the stable branch,
which has always been a serious problem.

The good news to my view is that Linux may actually be only about one
year behind (and sometimes ahead) on the non-ZFS features in Solaris.
FreeBSD is missing basically all of this, ex jails are really not as
thorough as VServer or LXC, but Linux is basically there already:

 * Xen support is better.  Oracle is sinking Solaris Xen support in
   favour of some old Oracle Xen kit based on Linux, I think?  

   which is disruptive and annoying for me, because I originally used
   OpenSolaris Xen to get some isolation from the churn of Linux Xen.
   but it means there's a fully-free-software path that's not even
   less annoying a transition than what Oracle's offering through
   partially-free uncertain-future tools.

 * Infiniband support in Linux was always good.  They don't have a
   single COMSTAR system which is too bad, but they have SCST for SRP
   (non-IP RDMA SCSI, the COMSTAR one that people say works with
   VMWare), and stgt for iSER (the one that works with the Solaris
   initiator).

 * instead of Crossbow they have RPS and RFS, which give some
   performance boost with ordinary network cards, not just with 10gig
   ones with flow caches.  My understanding's hazy but I think, with
   an ordinary card, you still have to take an IPI, but it will touch
   hardly any of the packet on the wrongCPU so you can still take
   advantage of per-core caches hot with TCP-flow-specific structures.
   I'm not a serious enough developer to know whether RPS+RFS is more
   or less thorough than the Crossbow-branded stuff, but it was
   committed to mainline at about the same time as Crossbow.

 * Dreamhost is already selling Linux zones based on VServer and has
   been for many years, so there *is* a zones alternative on Linux,
   and better yet unlike the incompletely-delivered and eventually
   removed lx brand, on Linux you get Linux zones with Linux packages
   and nginx working with epoll and sendfile (on solaris, for me
   eventport works but sendfile does not).  There's supposedly a total
   rewrite of VServer in the works called LXC, so maybe that will be
   the truly good one.  It may take them longer to get sysadmin tools
   that match zonecfg/zoneadm, but the path is set.

 * LTTng is an attempt at something dtrace-like.  It's still
   experimental, but has the same idea of large libraries of probes,
   programs cannot tell if they're being traced or not, and relatively
   sophisticated bundled analysis tools.

   
http://multivax.blogspot.com/2010/11/introduction-to-linux-tracing-toolkit.html 
-- LTTng linux dtrace competitor

The only thing missing is ZFS.  To me it looks like a good replacement
for that is years away.  I'm not excited about ocfs, or about kernel
module ZFS ports taking advantage of the Linus kmod ``interpretation''
and the grub GPLv3 patent protection.

Instead I'm hoping they skip this stage and style of storage and go
straight to something Lustre-like that supports snapshots.  I've got
my eye on ceph, and on Lustre itself of course because of the IB
support.  ex perhaps in the end you will have 64 - 256MB of
atftpd-provided initramfs which never goes away where init and sshd
and libc and all the complicated filesystem-related userspace lives,
so there is no more problems of running /usr/sbin/zpool off of a
ZFS---you will always be able to administrate your system even if
every ``disk'' is hung (or if cluster access is disrupted).  and there
will not be a complexity difference between a laptop with local disks
and cluster storage---everything will be the full-on complicated
version.

I feel ZFS doesn't scale small enough for phones, nor big enough for
what people are already doing in data centers, so why not give up on
small completely and waste even more RAM and complexity in the laptop
case?  and one of the most interesting appnotes to me about ZFS is
this one relling posted long ago:

 http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/820-7821/girgb?a=view

which is an extremely limited analog of what ceph and Lustre do, where
compute and storage nodes do not necessarily need to be separa

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Alex Blewitt]

On Dec 11, 2010, at 14:15, Frank Van Damme wrote:


2010/12/10 Freddie Cash :

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 5:31 AM, Edward Ned Harvey
 wrote:
It's been a while since I last heard anybody say anything about  
this.
What's the latest version of publicly released ZFS?  Has oracle  
made it

closed-source moving forward?

Nexenta ... openindiana ... etc ... Are they all screwed?


ZFSv28 is available for FreeBSD 9-CURRENT.

We won't know until after Oracle releases Solaris 11 whether or not
they'll live up to their promise to open the source to ZFSv31.  Until
Solaris 11 is released, there's really not much point in debating it.


And if they don't, it will be Sad, both in terms of useful code not
being available to a wide community to review and amend, as in terms
of Oracle not really getting the point about open source development.


I think it's a known fact that Oracle hasn't got the point of open  
source development. Forks ahoy!


http://www.jroller.com/niclas/entry/apache_leaves_jcp_ec
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Frank Van Damme]

2010/12/10 Freddie Cash :
> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 5:31 AM, Edward Ned Harvey
>  wrote:
>> It's been a while since I last heard anybody say anything about this.
>> What's the latest version of publicly released ZFS?  Has oracle made it
>> closed-source moving forward?
>>
>> Nexenta ... openindiana ... etc ... Are they all screwed?
>
> ZFSv28 is available for FreeBSD 9-CURRENT.
>
> We won't know until after Oracle releases Solaris 11 whether or not
> they'll live up to their promise to open the source to ZFSv31.  Until
> Solaris 11 is released, there's really not much point in debating it.

And if they don't, it will be Sad, both in terms of useful code not
being available to a wide community to review and amend, as in terms
of Oracle not really getting the point about open source development.


-- 
Frank Van Damme
No part of this copyright message may be reproduced, read or seen,
dead or alive or by any means, including but not limited to telepathy
without the benevolence of the author.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Erik Trimble]

On 12/11/2010 3:59 AM, casper@sun.com wrote:

ransfer-encoding: 7BIT

On 11/12/2010 00:07, Erik Trimble wrote:

The last update I see to the ZFS public tree is 29 Oct 2010.   Which,
I *think*, is about the time that the fork for the Solaris 11 Express
snapshot was taken.


I don't think this is the case.
Although all the files show modification date of 29 Oct 2010 at
src.opensolaris.org they are still old versions from August, at least
the ones I checked.

See
http://src.opensolaris.org/source/history/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/uts/common/fs/zfs/

the mercurial gate doesn't have any updates either.

Correct; the last public push was on 2010/8/18.

Casper


Hmm.

In that case, can I be the first to say "PANIC!  RUN FOR THE HILLS!"

:-)

--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop:  usca22-123
Phone:  x17195
Santa Clara, CA
Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Casper . Dik]

ransfer-encoding: 7BIT
>
>On 11/12/2010 00:07, Erik Trimble wrote:
>>
>> The last update I see to the ZFS public tree is 29 Oct 2010.   Which, 
>> I *think*, is about the time that the fork for the Solaris 11 Express 
>> snapshot was taken.
>>
>
>I don't think this is the case.
>Although all the files show modification date of 29 Oct 2010 at 
>src.opensolaris.org they are still old versions from August, at least 
>the ones I checked.
>
>See 
>http://src.opensolaris.org/source/history/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/uts/common/fs/zfs/
>
>the mercurial gate doesn't have any updates either.

Correct; the last public push was on 2010/8/18.

Casper

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Robert Milkowski]

On 11/12/2010 00:07, Erik Trimble wrote:


The last update I see to the ZFS public tree is 29 Oct 2010.   Which, 
I *think*, is about the time that the fork for the Solaris 11 Express 
snapshot was taken.




I don't think this is the case.
Although all the files show modification date of 29 Oct 2010 at 
src.opensolaris.org they are still old versions from August, at least 
the ones I checked.


See 
http://src.opensolaris.org/source/history/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/uts/common/fs/zfs/


the mercurial gate doesn't have any updates either.

Best regards,
 Robert Milkowski

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Erik Trimble]

On 12/10/2010 10:21 AM, Tim Cook wrote:



On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 8:54 AM, Bob Friesenhahn 
mailto:bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us>> 
wrote:


On Fri, 10 Dec 2010, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:


It's been a while since I last heard anybody say anything
about this.  What's the latest version of publicly
released ZFS?  Has oracle made it closed-source moving forward?


Nice troll.

Bob
-- 
Bob Friesenhahn

bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us
,
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/


I'm not sure how it's trolling.  There have been 0 public statements 
I've seen from Oracle on their future plans for what was opensolaris. 
 A leaked internal memo is NOT official company policy.  Until I see 
source or an official statement, I'm not holding my breath.


--Tim


It *is* a good question, given the Debacle around OpenSolaris releases.

The last update I see to the ZFS public tree is 29 Oct 2010.   Which, I 
*think*, is about the time that the fork for the Solaris 11 Express 
snapshot was taken.


Given that there obviously was some time taken to stabilizing the 
release candidate, and the US holiday season,  I suspect that it's just 
a matter of not having the ZFS tree source updated due to other time 
pressures.


I think that we can wait until early January before panicking.

:-)

-Erik

[Obdisclaimer:  I have no inside knowledge about this, and don't speak 
for Oracle. All statements are derived from publicly-available information]




--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop:  usca22-123
Phone:  x17195
Santa Clara, CA
Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Tim Cook]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 8:54 AM, Bob Friesenhahn <
bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us> wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Dec 2010, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
>
>
>> It's been a while since I last heard anybody say anything about this.
>> What's the latest version of publicly
>> released ZFS?  Has oracle made it closed-source moving forward?
>>
>
> Nice troll.
>
> Bob
> --
> Bob Friesenhahn
> bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
> GraphicsMagick Maintainer,http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
>

I'm not sure how it's trolling.  There have been 0 public statements I've
seen from Oracle on their future plans for what was opensolaris.  A leaked
internal memo is NOT official company policy.  Until I see source or an
official statement, I'm not holding my breath.

--Tim
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> From: Bob Friesenhahn [mailto:bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us]
> 
> > It's been a while since I last heard anybody say anything about this. 
What's
> the latest version of publicly
> > released ZFS?  Has oracle made it closed-source moving forward?
> 
> Nice troll.

Are you kidding?  6 months ago, and 1 year ago, people were flaming all over
the place and speculating all sorts of rubbish.  But it's long enough now
that we should have a good idea what to expect moving forward.  Sol 11
express has been out for a while now.  Many other projects (SGE in
particular) were formerly open source, and apparently no longer.

Not everybody wants to pay for solaris etc.  It's a valid question.

Do you have any information?  Or you just want to be a jerk and call names
pointlessly?

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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Freddie Cash]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 5:31 AM, Edward Ned Harvey
 wrote:
> It's been a while since I last heard anybody say anything about this.
> What's the latest version of publicly released ZFS?  Has oracle made it
> closed-source moving forward?
>
> Nexenta ... openindiana ... etc ... Are they all screwed?

ZFSv28 is available for FreeBSD 9-CURRENT.

We won't know until after Oracle releases Solaris 11 whether or not
they'll live up to their promise to open the source to ZFSv31.  Until
Solaris 11 is released, there's really not much point in debating it.


-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwc...@gmail.com
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Jacob Ritorto]

On 12/10/10 09:54, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:



It's been a while since I last heard anybody say anything about this.
What's the latest version of publicly
released ZFS?  Has oracle made it closed-source moving forward?


Nice troll.

Bob


Totally!  But is this really happening?
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Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:



It's been a while since I last heard anybody say anything about this.  What's 
the latest version of publicly
released ZFS?  Has oracle made it closed-source moving forward?


Nice troll.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/___
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[zfs-discuss] ZFS ... open source moving forward?

[Edward Ned Harvey]

It's been a while since I last heard anybody say anything about this.
What's the latest version of publicly released ZFS?  Has oracle made it
closed-source moving forward?

 

Nexenta ... openindiana ... etc ... Are they all screwed?

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