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Apple Shuts Down Open Source ZFS Project
- Thread starter Small White Car
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Bubba Satori
Suspended
Thanks for explaining it to us. 🙄
Well, it can't possibly be Apple's fault so it must be Sun/Oracles fault. 😀
A classic MR moment.
Rocketman
macrumors 603
Details. Pending EU approval, following DoJ approval, Oracle will be financially committed to Sun.
Sun themselves announced a 3000 person layoff if the deal does not close soon. It has not closed yet, yes, but once it does it's two peas in a pod.
It's getting to the point where Apple can afford to buy Oracle!
Apple needs a future leaning FS and I am opposed to changing FS very often at all.
Floppy disc file names are "backward compatible". 🙂 🙂
You are amusingly referring to 3.5" floppies. I am referring to 5.25" and 8.5" floppies. CP/M forever! Wordstar rocks! Collumn cut and paste, the lost art. 🙂
Hey dude, I bet you cannot get 100 instances of MacDraw to run on your so-called uber servers! 🙂
Rocketman
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
Not. At. All.
In the "grey zone" between announcement of intent to acquire and finalization of the acquisition - the companies must remain completely independent operations.
It's not a "detail", it is a fundamental part of M&A in the US and EU. The companies must remain completely separate until the moment that the merger is concluded. They cannot conduct any business on the assumption that the merger will be approved.
Rocketman
macrumors 603
That said, it is Apple that made this announcement, not Sun. Sun seems to be deferring to Oracle, like Bush deferred to Obama on transition, his political opposite.
This is the closing of only one instance of vendor sponsored open source of a very large open source effort. This does not kill it. It is merely a shot across the bow of Oracle by Apple.
100 instances of Mac Draw? 8.5" floppy on your server farm? NuBus graphics for terminal? Photos.
Rocketman
I would like to see ZFS + lustreFS + a versioningFS (think Git Filesystem)
HammerFS looks good too missing the versioning part though.
Not really. Mac OS X is a frankenstein, its a mix of XNU + Mach + BSD Userland (not easy to maintain). No full ZFS support or Jails Virtualization anywhere (important on server end). Apple got launchd and Grand Central Dispatch right (being ported over to FreeBSD as we speak). Mach meh thats a little iffy performance wise.
FreeBSD vs Darwin Kernel Performance wise Darwin is a slug. Lack of Jails is a big no no.
-backdraft
Solaris scales to a lot more processors then Mac OS X and has better resource management features (Zones, ZFS, SMF). At the kernel level Solaris IPC is magnitudes FASTER then Mach IPC. Mach has too many layers.
Read up on Solaris Internals and Mac OS X Internals. Solaris is targeted at the server end. Mac OS X is targeted at user interface responsiveness. Hopefully Grand Central Dispatch can help, but a complete kernel overhaul is needed.
I say gut XNU/Mach in Mac OS X and put a FreeBSD core. Replace FreeBSD inetd, rc scripts with launchd and maybe throw in the L4 kernel into the mix as well. Then port Cocoa and Aqua over.
Apple would gain a huge developer community and save many years of development in the process. For example adding Jails or Zones to Mac OS X would take a lot of engineering. It would be easier to scrap the frankenstein kernel and tweak a proven code base.
-backdraft
HammerFS looks good too missing the versioning part though.
Not really. Mac OS X is a frankenstein, its a mix of XNU + Mach + BSD Userland (not easy to maintain). No full ZFS support or Jails Virtualization anywhere (important on server end). Apple got launchd and Grand Central Dispatch right (being ported over to FreeBSD as we speak). Mach meh thats a little iffy performance wise.
FreeBSD vs Darwin Kernel Performance wise Darwin is a slug. Lack of Jails is a big no no.
-backdraft
Solaris scales to a lot more processors then Mac OS X and has better resource management features (Zones, ZFS, SMF). At the kernel level Solaris IPC is magnitudes FASTER then Mach IPC. Mach has too many layers.
Read up on Solaris Internals and Mac OS X Internals. Solaris is targeted at the server end. Mac OS X is targeted at user interface responsiveness. Hopefully Grand Central Dispatch can help, but a complete kernel overhaul is needed.
I say gut XNU/Mach in Mac OS X and put a FreeBSD core. Replace FreeBSD inetd, rc scripts with launchd and maybe throw in the L4 kernel into the mix as well. Then port Cocoa and Aqua over.
Apple would gain a huge developer community and save many years of development in the process. For example adding Jails or Zones to Mac OS X would take a lot of engineering. It would be easier to scrap the frankenstein kernel and tweak a proven code base.
-backdraft
Rocketman
macrumors 603
Taken as given. With the emergence of virtualization why not have an instance that runs that environment and an instance that runs MacOS 10.6.x, and an instance that runs OSX+touch. There is no longer a practical CPU limit. It is a matter of user application need and interface preference for an app.
Why compromise? The added software is less than the disc savings 10.6 got by killing backward compatibility.
Heck, add OS 9.2.2 and OS 8.6 and 4.2 compatibility zones 🙂
Tank on Fios!
Rocketman
I WAS the one
macrumors 6502a
Too bad all those stories about Sun buying Apple or Apple buying Sun were not true. A Solaris based Mac OS X would be great.
MorphingDragon
macrumors 603
Apple already is based off an OpenSourced system, so its not like theyll lose any closed source code. Changing over to OpenSolaris would seem more likely in Max OS 11 than 10 though.
idea_hamster
macrumors 65816
That's actually a point that I hadn't considered -- but I think that it actually cuts in favor of my theory that this was a price issue. After all, I think that we can agree that this isn't an issue of conflicting corporate culture or some other personality-level incompatibility. Which leaves price.
That doesn't, however, mean that the value of ZFS to Apple is the same as what we gauge it to be -- which is your point: If Apple has made significant headway on an organic FS that promises similar performance, then the marginal value to Apple falls.
So if we try to read between the lines, we could infer that Apple is, in fact, negotiating based on non-public information -- which would make them seem unreasonably stingy to Oracle and kill the deal. If we want to believe that Apple is putting the finishing touches on the next FS, we could take this as evidence for that idea.
aristotle
macrumors 68000
Stop being such a technology fanboy. Go ready up on the limitations of ZFS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Limitations
It has missing functionality such as encryption support and it does not seem to be a good fit for systems with removable media. It is also counterintuitive for the average user to grasp the concept that drives are part of a "pool". Finally, it is prone to fragmentation.
Given all of the problems and lack of completeness, I cannot understand how anyone in their right mind would advocate using ZFS for any system at this time. I think that ZFS, should it continue to be developed, could be a useful FS for a SAN device but I don't see it as ever being a good fit for a desktop OS.
Seriously, you fanboys need to stop jumping on the bandwagon of every new technology you hear about. ZFS is not an end user filesystem.
Nobody here has given a single valid reason to use ZFS over HFS+ on a desktop. I'm looking at you "I WAS the one". Your one line comment did not tell us anything.
What an ignorant comment. Apple absorbed all of Next, including the engineers, so "they" did "come up with" their own operating system. And then there's this little thing called Quartz that took MS how many years to reproduce? And pointing out the epic, unending failures of Microsoft doesn't bolster your specious theories about Apple.
So yeah, given that Apple already has a decent FS, already has engineers familiar with other filesystems, can hire just about any engineer they want and are constantly working on new, low-level technology (OpenCL, GCD, Clang, LLVM, garbage collection in Obj C, closures in C, seamless transition to 64 bit, LightPeak, just to name a few), I'm pretty sure they can write a file system.
EDIT: Whether that's a good business decision is another matter entirely. Even if ZFS wasn't going to become Apple's primary FS, full and robust support for it would have expanded their potential market. It's a shame it's not going to happen.
Anyone know how well ZFS performs on flash media? I get the feeling with the advent of flash drives that file systems optimized for spinning drives might not be optimum for flash.
MorphingDragon
macrumors 603
I can think of a good reason, itll make the people think they know something close their traps.
aristotle
macrumors 68000
So why did you post your comment then?
Credentials:
Software developer with over 10 years experience in the following technologies and areas.
C/C++ - unix/linux command line daemon processes
Perl - unix/linux daemon processes for secure file transfer between disparate OSes. Wrote an e-commerce web frontend, data layer code and session management.
Java - proprietary format file generation, web service clients integrated with sharepoint.
C# - multi-tier backend system development, web service and web service client development. Government spec based file format generation.
ANSI SQL/Transact-SQL - Query and stored procedure/function development. Database design.
Yeah, I know absolutely nothing about software development. 🙄 I had toyed with the idea of writing a replacement for Visual Source Safe with a colleague of mine a while back.
What sort of work do you do?
jaw04005
macrumors 601
Yet.
The U.S. Justice Department has already cleared the deal. Its just a matter of time at this point.
By the way, ZFS is an interesting beast. There was a recent episode of FLOSS Weekly devoted to ZFS where Leo Laporte and Randal Schwartz interviewed Suns Open Storage" product manager Aaron Newcomb.
There are features in ZFS that can be adopted to the consumer level, and Newcomb discusses those possibilities.
http://twit.tv/floss58
MorphingDragon
macrumors 603
Blunt Generic Comments FTW!!! Always brings out the people that have the need to reinforce themselves.
Just because you can list a big long line of credentials doesn't mean you can put away bias on a subject. Just like just because you have a degree in Law doesnt mean you're very lawful.
For the record I'm a student in computer science. 😀
Its not new. I have been running it at home for 3 years+. I assume apple would wrap a gui around it to make it more accesable thats the easy part to be honest Sun did it but it still looks "Sun" !!. Is time machine too complicated for users ? If time machine were implemented with ZFS it would be magnificent, as it stands TM is a pi** poor implementation compared to what they could do....but it does look pretty.
HFS+ may have the features people need.....but then so does textedit.....its about innovation for me, Apple are really missing an opportunity.
TennisandMusic
Guest
That's freakin lame. A CS student bagging on a guy with real world experience.
You learn much much more out in the real world than you do in a classroom.
MorphingDragon
macrumors 603
He never actually said anything specific though, only that he has a lot of skills. Seemed more of a "Hey look at me, I'm bigger and better than you" post. Thats what I get for making a snarky comment though.
BTW I have worked in the real world. I'm an in house software dev/admin for a law firm. (And I'm not talking about silly little VBA scripts for Office) I considered contributing to the Fedora Project but decided to learn Obj-C instead. I've done the Linux from scratch project, essential for Custom Linux servers.
Wow, sure is an impressive amount of stuff in there having to do with operating system internals and filesystems....
MorphingDragon
macrumors 603
Careful man, hes gonna be hellbent protecting his ego now. 🙄
__
I wonder if Apple has actually considered things like Ext4?
THX1139
macrumors 68000
I'm trying to understand this. Apple doesn't want to pay license fees to Sun for an amazing file system that is much better than anything on the market? And, Apple has over a billion dollars cash reserve in the bank? And they charge a premium for their computers that could easily offset the license fees? Makes no sense.
Full of Win
macrumors 68030
Its not entirely clear if its a fee only matter. It may be that, as others have said, Sun/Oracle wanted Apple to indemnify them against some pending legal issues. Licensing is good, but it would save a lot of headaches to make the file system how you want it and not worry about trying to graft on another work.