Btrfs development plans

Btrfs development plans

[Chris Mason]

Hello everyone,

Just a quick note about the recently announced purchase of Sun by
Oracle.  This does not change Oracle's plans for Btrfs at all, and Btrfs
is still a key project for us.

Please, keep your btrfs contributions and testing coming ;)

-chris

Re: Btrfs development plans

[Tomasz Torcz]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 10:37:33AM -0400, Chris Mason wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>=20
> Just a quick note about the recently announced purchase of Sun by
> Oracle.  This does not change Oracle's plans for Btrfs at all, and Bt=
rfs
> is still a key project for us.

  But now Oracle can re-license Solaris and merge ZFS with btrfs.
Just kidding, I don't think it would be technically feasible.

  (OTOH, acquiring Sun's patent portfolio=E2=80=A6  there are some stra=
nge places
on earth where people care about software patents).

--=20
Tomasz Torcz               RIP is irrevelant. Spoofing is futile.
xmpp: zdzichubg@chrome.pl     Your routes will be aggreggated. -- Alex =
Yuriev

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Re: Btrfs development plans

[Ahmed Kamal]

> =A0But now Oracle can re-license Solaris and merge ZFS with btrfs.
> Just kidding, I don't think it would be technically feasible.
>

May I suggest the name "ZbtrFS" :)
Sorry couldn't resist. On a more serious note though, is there any
technical benefits that justify continuing to push money in btrfs
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Re: Btrfs development plans

[Chris Mason]

On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 18:10 +0200, Ahmed Kamal wrote:
> >  But now Oracle can re-license Solaris and merge ZFS with btrfs.
> > Just kidding, I don't think it would be technically feasible.
> >
> 
> May I suggest the name "ZbtrFS" :)
> Sorry couldn't resist. On a more serious note though, is there any
> technical benefits that justify continuing to push money in btrfs

The short answer from my point of view is yes.  This doesn't really
change the motivations for working on btrfs or the problems we're trying
to solve.

-chris

Re: Btrfs development plans

[Andrey Kuzmin]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 8:10 PM, Ahmed Kamal
<email.ahmedkamal@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> =C2=A0But now Oracle can re-license Solaris and merge ZFS with btrfs=
=2E
>> Just kidding, I don't think it would be technically feasible.
>>
>
> May I suggest the name "ZbtrFS" :)
> Sorry couldn't resist. On a more serious note though, is there any
> technical benefits that justify continuing to push money in btrfs

Personally, I don't see any. Porting zfs to Linux will cost (quite)
some time and effort, but this is peanuts compared to what's needed to
get btrfs  (no offense meant) to maturity level/feature parity with
zfs. The only thing that could prevent this is CDDL licensing issues
and patent claims from NTAP over zfs snapshots  and other features;
btrfs is free from both.

Regards,
Andrey

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Re: Btrfs development plans

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Andrey Kuzmin
<andrey.v.kuzmin@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 8:10 PM, Ahmed Kamal
> <email.ahmedkamal@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> =C2=A0But now Oracle can re-license Solaris and merge ZFS with btrf=
s.
>>> Just kidding, I don't think it would be technically feasible.
>>>
>>
>> May I suggest the name "ZbtrFS" :)
>> Sorry couldn't resist. On a more serious note though, is there any
>> technical benefits that justify continuing to push money in btrfs
>
> Personally, I don't see any. Porting zfs to Linux will cost (quite)
> some time and effort, but this is peanuts compared to what's needed t=
o
> get btrfs =C2=A0(no offense meant) to maturity level/feature parity w=
ith
> zfs. The only thing that could prevent this is CDDL licensing issues
> and patent claims from NTAP over zfs snapshots =C2=A0and other featur=
es;
> btrfs is free from both.

I'm sure that people with far more experience than I will comment=E2=80=
=94
But considering that BTRFS is in the Linux Kernel today, the histories
of other imported FSes (XFS), and the state of ZFS in FreeBSD this
may not be strictly true.
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Re: Btrfs development plans

[Andrey Kuzmin]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com> w=
rote:
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Andrey Kuzmin
> <andrey.v.kuzmin@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 8:10 PM, Ahmed Kamal
>> <email.ahmedkamal@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>> =C2=A0But now Oracle can re-license Solaris and merge ZFS with btr=
fs.
>>>> Just kidding, I don't think it would be technically feasible.
>>>>
>>>
>>> May I suggest the name "ZbtrFS" :)
>>> Sorry couldn't resist. On a more serious note though, is there any
>>> technical benefits that justify continuing to push money in btrfs
>>
>> Personally, I don't see any. Porting zfs to Linux will cost (quite)
>> some time and effort, but this is peanuts compared to what's needed =
to
>> get btrfs =C2=A0(no offense meant) to maturity level/feature parity =
with
>> zfs. The only thing that could prevent this is CDDL licensing issues
>> and patent claims from NTAP over zfs snapshots =C2=A0and other featu=
res;
>> btrfs is free from both.
>
> I'm sure that people with far more experience than I will comment=E2=80=
=94
> But considering that BTRFS is in the Linux Kernel today, the historie=
s
> of other imported FSes (XFS),

Imported file-systems (someone more experienced may correct me if I'm
wrong) have previously been give-aways. This one is different - zfs is
in active development, with highly welcomed features like
de-duplication coming.

> and the state of ZFS in FreeBSD this may not be strictly true.

This was one-man's effort (though a heroic one, definitely), hardly a
case to compare with.


Regards,
Andrey
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Re: Btrfs development plans

[Chris Mason]

On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 21:18 +0400, Andrey Kuzmin wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com>=
 wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Andrey Kuzmin
> > <andrey.v.kuzmin@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 8:10 PM, Ahmed Kamal
> >> <email.ahmedkamal@googlemail.com> wrote:
> >>>>  But now Oracle can re-license Solaris and merge ZFS with btrfs.
> >>>> Just kidding, I don't think it would be technically feasible.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> May I suggest the name "ZbtrFS" :)
> >>> Sorry couldn't resist. On a more serious note though, is there an=
y
> >>> technical benefits that justify continuing to push money in btrfs
> >>
> >> Personally, I don't see any. Porting zfs to Linux will cost (quite=
)
> >> some time and effort, but this is peanuts compared to what's neede=
d to
> >> get btrfs  (no offense meant) to maturity level/feature parity wit=
h
> >> zfs. The only thing that could prevent this is CDDL licensing issu=
es
> >> and patent claims from NTAP over zfs snapshots  and other features=
;
> >> btrfs is free from both.
> >
> > I'm sure that people with far more experience than I will comment=E2=
=80=94
> > But considering that BTRFS is in the Linux Kernel today, the histor=
ies
> > of other imported FSes (XFS),
>=20
> Imported file-systems (someone more experienced may correct me if I'm
> wrong) have previously been give-aways.


Definitely not true.

>  This one is different - zfs is
> in active development, with highly welcomed features like
> de-duplication coming.
>=20

I can't read the future, or really say the future directions of any of
the sun projects.  What I do know is that btrfs development will
continue, and that Oracle's work on btrfs will not end or decrease.

-chris


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Re: Btrfs development plans

[Alex Elsayed]

Andrey Kuzmin wrote:

<snip>
> Personally, I don't see any. Porting zfs to Linux will cost (quite)
> some time and effort, but this is peanuts compared to what's needed to
> get btrfs  (no offense meant) to maturity level/feature parity with
> zfs. The only thing that could prevent this is CDDL licensing issues
> and patent claims from NTAP over zfs snapshots  and other features;
> btrfs is free from both.
<snip>

There's one thing you're overlooking: the core kernel developers have 
already stated that ZFS is a "rampant layering violation" and otherwise 
indicated they do not want ZFS in the Linux kernel, whereas BtrFS has
gotten a much more positive response. It may well be that on the /Oracle/ 
side, the political and technical problems with porting ZFS are smaller than 
those with finishing BtrFS, but if the kernel developers wouldn't accept it, 
_any_ money and effort spent on it would be wasted money and effort.

Re: Btrfs development plans

[Ric Wheeler]

Chris Mason wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> Just a quick note about the recently announced purchase of Sun by
> Oracle.  This does not change Oracle's plans for Btrfs at all, and Btrfs
> is still a key project for us.
>
> Please, keep your btrfs contributions and testing coming ;)
>
> -chris
>
>   
Just to chime in on a supportive note here, my file system team at Red 
Hat is very interested in the continued success of the btrfs project and 
we definitely plan to keep contributing (and hopefully even increase the 
number of active Red Hat contributors)!

Regards,

Ric

Re: Btrfs development plans

[Eric Anopolsky]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 751 bytes --]

On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 20:57 +0400, Andrey Kuzmin wrote:
> 
> Personally, I don't see any. Porting zfs to Linux will cost (quite)
> some time and effort, but this is peanuts compared to what's needed to
> get btrfs  (no offense meant) to maturity level/feature parity with
> zfs. The only thing that could prevent this is CDDL licensing issues
> and patent claims from NTAP over zfs snapshots  and other features;
> btrfs is free from both.
> 

In case anyone is interested, ZFS already has been ported to Linux as a
FUSE module. A very talented GSoC participant did the port as his
project. It works pretty well, but AFAIK it's not quite suitable for a
root filesystem yet. Still, much of the hard work has been done.

Cheers,
Eric


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Re: Btrfs development plans

[Stephan von Krawczynski]

On Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:38:57 -0400
Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 18:10 +0200, Ahmed Kamal wrote:
> > >  But now Oracle can re-license Solaris and merge ZFS with btrfs.
> > > Just kidding, I don't think it would be technically feasible.
> > >
> > 
> > May I suggest the name "ZbtrFS" :)
> > Sorry couldn't resist. On a more serious note though, is there any
> > technical benefits that justify continuing to push money in btrfs
> 
> The short answer from my point of view is yes.  This doesn't really
> change the motivations for working on btrfs or the problems we're trying
> to solve.

... which sounds logical to me. From looking at the project for a while one
can see you are trying to solve problems that are not really linux' ones...

-- 
Regards,
Stephan

Re: Btrfs development plans

[Dmitri Nikulin]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 5:46 PM, Stephan von Krawczynski
<skraw@ithnet.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:38:57 -0400
> Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com> wrote:
>
>> The short answer from my point of view is yes. =C2=A0This doesn't re=
ally
>> change the motivations for working on btrfs or the problems we're tr=
ying
>> to solve.
>
> ... which sounds logical to me. From looking at the project for a whi=
le one
> can see you are trying to solve problems that are not really linux' o=
nes...

Even so, I certainly hope that btrfs end up at least as reliable and
feature-complete as ZFS, if ZFS itself cannot be merged into Linux.
That's a big ask, but now that ZFS' IP has been imported into Oracle,
perhaps a lot of patent and copyright issues can be smoothed over,
giving btrfs a huge advantage relative to what it had before the
acquisition.

--=20
Dmitri Nikulin

Centre for Synchrotron Science
Monash University
Victoria 3800, Australia
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Re: Btrfs development plans

[ashford]

Dmitri

> now that ZFS' IP has been imported into Oracle

You write as though this is a completed task.  In reality, there are several
hurdles (as seen from the IBM offer), and it will take at least six months to
get to the point that you assume has been complete.  To EFFECTIVELY merge the
IP will probably take a few years.

As with the IBM offer, the Oracle offer isn't done, and could fail.  At this
point, Chris is correct in choosing to move forward with BTRFS.  As for what
happens when/if Oracle buys Sun, that's best decided AFTER it happens.

Peter Ashford

Re: Btrfs development plans

[Chris Samuel]

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/* Catching up on email */

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:27:39 pm Eric Anopolsky wrote:

> In case anyone is interested, ZFS already has been ported to Linux as a
> FUSE module. A very talented GSoC participant did the port as his
> project.

A GSoC student who got employed by Cluster Filesystems to do work on Lustre, 
which then got acquired by Sun, who will (all things being equal) now be 
acquired by Oracle. :-)

ZFS/FUSE is useful (I use it as an rsync destination for various filesystems 
that I then snapshot) but it's still got a long way to go and from what I last 
saw it's pretty much unmaintained now.

cheers,
Chris
-- 
 Chris Samuel  :  http://www.csamuel.org/  :  Melbourne, VIC

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