Re: ZFS with Linux: An Open Plea

["linux-os \(Dick Johnson\)" <linux-os@analogic.com>]

On Tue, 17 Apr 2007, Theodore Tso wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 17, 2007 at 02:54:32AM -0400, David R. Litwin wrote:
>>> The license that protects the code we write is far from nonsense.
>>
>> I know. In the end, this is the reason this topic is being discussed.
>>
>> I suggest the first thing you do is contact the ZFS developers and
>> convince them to release their code under a license that's GPL
>> compatible, then we can start looking at a Linux port.
>>
>> I began by contacting them. One of the devs there told me to contact the
>> Linux devs.
>
> Well, that was totally useless answer from the ZFS developers.  What
> he should have told you is to contact Sun management, since they are
> the only ones who can decide whether or not to release ZFS under a GPL
> license, and more importantly, to give a patent license for any
> patents they may have filed in the course of developing ZFS.  This is
> not anything Linux developers can help you with.
>
> 						- Ted

Copyright law protects an implementation, not a specification. If
there is a specification for a particular file-system, then certainly
one can create a compatible one without violating any copyrights. Patents
protect algorithms and other implementation details. Certainly, there
are at least a hundred ways of performing the same function using
a programming language, and if you never look at somebody else's'
implementation details, you certainly should not be violating a patent.

So, what needs to be done is simply find out the specifications of
the file-system. From the specifications, one writes compatible code.
To protect "IP," you might have to give it a different name than "ZFS,"
but you certain should be able to write code that handles ZFS format
files. The patent (pending) seems to work around the little/big endian
issue. So, there is probably something in a header somewhere that resolves
this --big deal, machines that are incompatible will have to suffer
byte-swapping overhead. There are also 64-bit checksums for some reason.
I guess they have bad hardware and needed a work-around. The 128-bit
file-size follows the, "if a little is good, more must be better..."
logic that became prevalent in industry once sales persons and accountants
took over engineering.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.6.16.24 on an i686 machine (5592.59 BogoMips).
New book: http://www.AbominableFirebug.com/
_


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