On 2013.11.07 09:57, Mike Miller wrote: > It sounds quite nice, but I guess the use of the CDDL license has gotten > in the way of its development for Linux because the CDDL is a > free-software license but not GPL compatible. > > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CDDL Correct. This is why ZFS support cannot be in the Linux kernel itself (unless it were completely reimplemented from scratch). > Apparently, ZFS was developed by Sun Microsystems which was bought out by > Oracle. So there is an Oracle version, called ZFS, distributed under the > CDDL, and there is a "truly open-source successor," called OpenZFS, also > distributed under the CDDL: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenZFS > > I'm not sure how they differ. In this thread, when people wrote about > experiences with ZFS, were they really talking about ZFS or OpenZFS? Or > are they almost indistinguishable functionally and in terms of > reliability? Oracle closed the ZFS source code and they have their own version with a few new features like encryption. This version is proprietary and exclusive to Solaris. OpenZFS seems to be a new name for the open source version developed and maintained mainly by the Illumos project (the OpenSolaris family of operating systems - e.g., OpenIndiana). At least one of the principal architects of ZFS, Matt Ahrens, left Oracle and is heavily involved in the OpenZFS project. This version has a different set of new features, and the zpool version is 5000 to avoid confusion with the Oracle version, which continued from 28 (it is in the mid 30s now). OpenZFS also refers to the current project underway to make ZFS easier to support for many platforms. Because of the different feature sets, the two are mostly incompatible, though it may be possible with the feature flags feature of the open source ZFS to limit yourself to a common set of features. I'm pretty sure most people outside the Oracle Solaris world refer to the open source version these days.