It seems like we're really on the subject of filesystems and related technology the past few days. We had an interview with the man behind BeServed, an item on WinFS' current status, and now we - possibly - have news on ZFS coming to Linux. Possibly, because it's all speculation from here on out.
Practical Technology brings something really interesting under our attention. Jeff Bonwick, creator of Sun's Zettabyte File System (ZFS), posted three photos of him chatting away with Linus Torvalds on a few comfy armchairs - while enjoying a few beers. The blog post is called "Casablanca", and ends with the tentative "All I can say for the moment is... Stay tuned."
One of the comments on the entry found out that Jim Grisanzio listed a link to this entry under "ZFS pics", but Grisanzio himself immediately offered a less tinfoil-hat-like explanation: "Well, Jeff had a hand in writing ZFS, so that's why I called it ZFS pics."
The other comments on the entry debate the merits of possibly porting ZFS to Linux, which so far has been impossible due to the incompatibility between the GPL and CDDL licenses. One comment reads "Yeah, let's decrease the reasons why people would want to pick up Solaris. Wonderful business strategy." Others seem to agree: "If you let Linux have ZFS, it's like porting Solaris to x86, the stupidest move you ever made. Now no one is forced to buy your computers, and your stock sucks."
Others explain that allowing Linux to 'have' ZFS would mean a much broader user base for the advanced filesystem, which would mean more testing, more bug reports, and in the end, a better filesystem. It is also being pointed out that FreeBSD and Mac OS X already have ZFS, and that "the world hasn't fallen apart just yet."
Some people even think all this might indicate Linus Torvalds taking up a job working for Sun, but I personally think that's rather unlikely. Then again, what's unlikely in a world where OpenSolaris actually runs on x86 as a first-class citizen, and Apple uses Intel?
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