[chasil]

Oracle certainly controls the license for ZFS.

Release under a compatible license would likely see a ZFS kernel module appear in EPEL immediately; Red Hat would likely replace XFS with ZFS as the default in RHEL8 were this legally possible.

Oracle supports BtrFS in their Linux clone of RHEL. It certainly appears that Red Hat is swallowing a "poison pill" to increase Oracle's support costs (and I'm surprised that they have not swallowed more).

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E52668_01/E54669/html/ol7-about-bt...

With these new added costs, Oracle might find it cheaper to simply support the code for the whole ecosystem (CentOS and Scientific Linux included). Given the adversarial relationship that has developed between the two protagonists, an enforceable legal agreement would likely be Red Hat's precondition.

Otherwise, BtrFS has been mortally wounded.