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by carlavilla 2743 days ago
If the ZFS FreeBSD code are going to be taken from ZoL, what's the difference of use ZFS on FreeBSD and GNU/Linux?
3 comments

For ZFS itself, probably not much. It'd be the rest of the system you'd be selecting things for.
Isn't FreeBSD suddenly getting a version of zfs with features and bits of code that is developed against Linux?

Sounds like edge cases for performance and stability could show up?

They were already getting a version of zfs developed against another OS (illumos).
They know the edge cases and gotchas on that version by now but until they test the ZoL version on wide variety of FreeBSD deployments, it could mean they're back to labelling it a beta version at this point.
FreeBSD can bundle it in the installer, and put the root filesystem in a ZFS dataset.

Because of GPL incompatibility with the CDDL, Linux cannot do this. A compliant installer must put root on something else, usually ext4 or xfs. A Linux installer iso putting root in a zfs dataset opens a terrible legal door.

Of course Linux can do this. I'm writing this very reply on a Linux system booted directly off a ZFS dataset.

    % zfs list rpool/ROOT/default 
    NAME                 USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
    rpool/ROOT/default  14.8G  60.1G  11.9G  /
Support for this exists in GRUB and initramfs-tools, and it works perfectly.

The GPL is not an EULA. It's a distribution licence. There is absolutely no problem in using ZFS on your system, and there's no legal restriction on what an installer may or may not do.

Uh, no?

If said installer downloaded and compiled the code (nvidia-drivers style), you'd not have an issue. Only once the code is combined does it "violate" the license. You can't distribute something in violation of GPL2, but you can keep it for yourself. As long as the installer doesn't distribute offending binaries, you're fine.

Hopefully very little! With work on a windows port, os x support, and emerging encryption support - we might finally have a modern, nice, solid cross platform read-write-safe fs beyond fat32!

Encryption support should be on 0.8 (next) release:

https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/milestone/12