-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 In response the Josenildo Marques' message regarding Sun Microsystems' announcement of the release of their new "blazingly fast" filesystem, ZFS. Ten Reasons To *NOT* Use ZFS: 1. The License (CDDL) "has some complex restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL" http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html 2 . ZFS does not support the necessary extended attributes and ACLs to enable the implementation of SELinux security. Instead Sun prefers the deployment of its own security software "Trusted Solaris", which is not FOSS and runs at a cost of "$995 per seat for the Standard Edition Desktop System to $79,495 for the Certified Edition Data Center Server." http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1641823,00.asp 3. This is primarily a Solaris product, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Linux. The possibility of future Linux support cannot be ruled out, however - at what cost - both in financial *and* license terms? 4. This is a product for the server room, not the desktop. The main bottleneck on a desktop system is the underlying storage hardware itself, not the filesystem. If you have the budget and requirements for a Solaris server, then buy a Solaris server, otherwise there are a myriad of other (IMHO) better solutions. Remember, Trusted Solaris is not Open Solaris. 5. Linux already has a (arguably) superior filesystem in the form of Reiser4, which is much more extensible and uses a dancing trees system, which in itself is a great improvement over the old block tree method employed by ZFS. Yes Reiser4 does not currently support SELinux extensions either, but then the book's not closed on Reiser4 development, and it *is* Free, after all. 6. ZFS is a product of Sun Microsystems, developers of Sun Java. The distribution license for Sun Java has caused so much controversy over at Debian that they're threatening to pull the package from non-free and even dissociate with Sun's legal team, the SPI. Sun Java is subject to draconian export restrictions imposed by the US government, against any country not favoured by the US, and its SDL dictates that "you do not combine, configure or distribute the Software to run in conjunction with any additional software that implements the same or similar functionality or APIs as the Software" http://download.java.net/dlj/DLJ-v1.1.pdf This would preclude distributing GNU GCJ and Sun Java on the same system. Do you really want Sun dictating to you what software you have on your computer? Do you really want software from this company on your system? Frankly you might just as well install Microsoft Windows and be done with it. 7. Sun is claiming all kinds of performance benchmarks, but the "blazing performance" has yet to be independently verified, and few comparisons exist between ZFS and any other high performance filesystem. Ultimately Sun are motivated by money, not integrity, so if their motivations are questionable, then so are their claims. 8. Despite their rivalry and even previous court battles, Sun is rather too close to Microsoft for comfort. "A year ago you could say we were moving from the courtroom and entering the computer lab," Ballmer said, summing up the rivals' progress. "Twelve months later I think we're poised, thanks to the work of hundreds of engineers on both sides, to leave the computer lab and enter the market place together." http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3504976 9. After SCO made ridiculous claims about being the owner of Linux IP, Sun apparently agreed with them, since they entered into a business agreement to license Unix from SCO. http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21894.html 10. 64 bit architectures have been around for years, and are in fact virtually mainstream these days, and yet Sun (having released a 64 bit version of Java) have yet to release a 64 bit Mozilla plugin for it, to enable Java Applets on Gecko based browsers. The Linux AMD64 self-extracting file of Sun Java JDK (jdk-1_5_0_07-linux-amd64.bin) is some 41.76 MB ... the missing plugin (libjavaplugin_oji.so) is only *77 bytes* !!! And *why* does Sun refuse to include a tiny 77 byte Mozilla plugin with their 64bit Java? Because, apparently, they think that there are no 64bit versions of any Gecko browsers available, or to be more precise, because Mozilla does not distribute a 64bit binary upstream??? A company that employs such retarded logic, and has such a slow response to technological change, cannot be trusted to keep pace with changing hardware trends in other sectors of the market, such as storage hardware for example. Imagine that you had paid a considerable amount for new storage solutions, either at home or at work, only to discover that Sun's "blazingly fast" filesystem was completely unsupported on that hardware. How long might you have to wait for your ($995 - $79,495) Trusted Solaris with ZFS to be redeployed? I used to be under the impression (or at least ever hopeful) that Sun might one day wake up to the FOSS trends in the industry, and reconsider their licensing and methods, but with each new announcement from Santa Carla they just get worse. So to anyone considering posting here, on a Fedora mailing list of all places, announcements from Sun Microsystems, I say that IMHO any news from Sun is unwelcome, unless that news is the wholesale GPL re-licensing of their entire product catalogue. - -- Regards, Keith G. Robertson-Turner. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFEmgGbi+i8fEQ9xnoRAu+kAKCRaYxkLkNalnzfphkpmqj7uFqAHACeLY8B aHo2njLLA77E5qqmYRzmN0Q= =eiMo -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
