Dear Sunshiners

A touch sensitive about the old ZFS thing, are we? Bottom line, whether it is for money issues or something else, Apple has decided not to go with ZFS. That is the only fact out there, the rest is just conjecture. But, your posts expose several Sunshier myths.

"ZFS is the only mature option, it is the best, bla, bla bla!" This is simple to deal with. Linux already has a wealth of free options (ext3, ext4, BTRFS, tux3, etc), some of which have been in production and others which are still developmental, and there is nothing to stop Apple simply incorporating one of these. For ZFS to really have been the only option it would have to have provided something the others didn't at a price Apple thought was right. If the adoption of ZFS failed because of licensing then it looks like Apple simply didn't think it was worth the money. As it stands, most fanbois seem very happy with HFS+, so Apple isn't exactly desperate to replace it.

"The NetApp lawsuit has no merit." Yes, and can I see your copyright law degree, please? Oh, you haven't got one. Quel surprise! It's up to the courts to decide the merits or not of the suit. And before you start labelling NetApp a patent troll, you may want to conside that NetApp went defensive after Sun tried to stick them with a massive licensing charge for StorageTek technologies, whic Sun bought to go trolling with.

"Nothing is as good as ZFS!" Yeah, right! I'm betting you can't even name two of the alternatives without a Google search, let alone competantly comment on their relative merits and capabiities. Such blinkered bleating just reminds others of the "Solaris on SPARC and nothing else" mantra, and look what happened there.

"BTRFS is a toy and Larry will drop it for ZFS 'cos we say so." I suggest you try reading articles like http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7308/1/ for a more balanced view.

"ZFS is innovative and there is nothing else like it!" ZFS is a WAFL clone. Even Sun's own engineers admit that they used it as their inspiration if nothing else. Other filesystem tools do more with a lot more reliablility and commercial support (such as the Veritas LVM products, which are still used of enterprise Slowaris). When you make comments like that all you do is expose your lack of knowledge.

I'll stop there before Ms Bee decides you ickle Sunshienrs need any more protecting from the rigours of the real World.

/SP&L