Linus Torvalds Doesn't Recommend Using ZFS On Linux

guest · Jan 11, 2020

Linus Torvalds Doesn't Recommend Using ZFS On Linux
Torvalds doesn't want to be hounded by Oracle's legal team for merging ZFS filesystem code into the Linux kernel
January 9, 2020
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linus-Says-No-To-ZFS-Linux

Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds doesn't recommend using ZFS On Linux at least until Oracle were to re-license the code to make it friendly for mainline inclusion. But even then he doesn't seem turned on by the ZFS features or general performance.

Derailed from the recent mailing list discussion over Torvalds' thoughts on the Linux kernel scheduler, he responded to a post of a user complaining about the Linux kernel recently breaking the out-of-tree ZFS module.
Linus wrote of ZFS on Linux:

"[...] And honestly, there is no way I can merge any of the ZFS efforts until I get an official letter from Oracle that is signed by their main legal counsel or preferably by Larry Ellison himself that says that yes, it's ok to do so and treat the end result as GPL'd.
But considering Oracle's litigious nature, and the questions over licensing, there's no way I can feel safe in ever doing so.

Don't use ZFS. It's that simple. It was always more of a buzzword than anything else, I feel, and the licensing issues just make it a non-starter for me. [...] The benchmarks I've seen do not make ZFS look all that great.
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guest · Jan 13, 2020

Linus Torvalds says “Don’t use ZFS”—but doesn’t seem to understand it
Linus should avoid authoritative statements about projects he's unfamiliar with
January 13, 2020
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...atements-arent-right-heres-the-straight-dope/

Given the massive weight automatically given Torvalds' words due to his status as founding developer and chief maintainer of the Linux kernel, we feel it's a good idea to explain both the controversial kernel change itself, and Torvalds' comments about both the change in question and the ZFS filesystem.
The original January 2019 controversy, explained [...]
“We don’t break users”
Torvalds' position in last Monday's forum post starts out reasonable and well-informed—after all, he's Linus Torvalds, discussing the Linux kernel.
From there, Torvalds branches out into license concerns, another topic on which he's accurate and reasonable.

So far, so good, but then Torvalds dips into his own impressions of ZFS itself, both as a project and a filesystem. This is where things go badly off the rails [...]
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