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It was! And Apple seemed fine with including DTrace under the CDDL. I’m not sure why Apple wanted some additional arrangement but they did.

by ahl 1y ago

ethbr1 1y ago
The argument advanced in the piece isn't without merit -- that ripping out DTrace, if subsequent legal developments demanded it, would be a heck of a lot easier than removing a filesystem that would by then contain massive amounts of customer data. And given what a litigious jackass Larry Ellison / Oracle is, I can't fault Apple for being nervous.
- mixmastamyk 1y ago
  Ironic since the post above tells the story as LE saying no to Jobs.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    There's always two sides to one story. And Jobs was not the kind of person to take no for an answer. I've known other narcissists and they've always seen friends as more of a resource than someone to care about. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Another rumour was that Schwartz spilling the beans pissed Jobs off, which I wouldn't really put past him. Though I don't think it would have been enough to kill this. I think all these little things added up and the end result was just "better not then".
- cryptonector 1y ago
  No, it was that Apple wanted to be indemnified in the event that Sun/Oracle lost the NetApp lawsuit.
cryptonector 1y ago
The NetApp lawsuit. Apple wanted indemnification, and Sun/Oracle did not want to indemnify Apple. At the time that NetApp filed its lawsuit I blogged about how ZFS was a straightforward evolution of BSD 4.4's log structured filesystem. I didn't know that to be the case historically, that is, I didn't know if Bonwick was inspired by LFS, but I showed how almost in every way ZFS was a simple evolution of LFS. I showed my blog to Jeff to see how he felt about it, and he didn't say much but he did acknowledge it. The point of that blog was to show that there was prior art and that NetApp's lawsuit was worthless. I pointed it out to Sun's general counsel, too.
- tw04 1y ago
  While I was disappointed that NetApp sued, the ZFS team literally referenced NetApp and WAFL multiple times in their presenations IIRC. They were kind of begging to be sued. Also, according to NetApp, "Sun started it". https://www.networkcomputing.com/data-center-networking/netapp-smacks-sun-with-patent-suit https://www.networkcomputing.com/data-center-networking/neta...
  - cryptonector 1y ago
    Ok? So what?
  - bcantrill 1y ago
    No, the ZFS team did not "literally reference NetApp and WAFL" in their presentations and no, Sun did not "start it" -- NetApp initiated the litigation (though Sun absolutely countersued), and NetApp were well on their way to losing not only their case but also their WAFL patents when Oracle acquired Sun. Despite having inherited a winning case, Oracle chose to allow the suit to be dismissed[0]; terms of the settlement were undisclosed. [0] https://www.theregister.com/2010/09/09/oracle_netapp_zfs_dismiss/ https://www.theregister.com/2010/09/09/oracle_netapp_zfs_dis...
    - tw04 1y ago
      We can agree to disagree. Your own link states that Sun approached NetApp about patents 18 months prior to the lawsuit being filed (to be clear that was Storagetek before Sun acquired them): >The suit was filed in September 2007, in Texas, three years ago, but the spat between the two started 18 months before that, according to NetApp, when Sun's lawyers contacted NetApp saying its products violated Sun patents, and requesting licensing agreements and royalties for the technologies concerned. And there was a copy of the original email from the lawyer which I sadly did not save a copy of, as referenced here: https://ntptest.typepad.com/dave/2007/09/sun-patent-team.html https://ntptest.typepad.com/dave/2007/09/sun-patent-team.htm... As for the presentation, I can't find it at the moment but will keep looking because I do remember it. That being said, a blog post from Val at the time specifically mentions NetApp, WAFL, how the team thought it was cool and decided to build your own: https://web.archive.org/web/20051231160415/http://blogs.sun.com/val/ https://web.archive.org/web/20051231160415/http://blogs.sun.... And the original paper on ZFS that appears to have been scrubbed from the internet mentions WAFL repeatedly (and you were a co-author so I'm not sure why you're saying you didn't reference NetApp or WAFL): https://ntptest.typepad.com/dave/2007/09/netapp-sues-sun.html https://ntptest.typepad.com/dave/2007/09/netapp-sues-sun.htm... https://www.academia.edu/20291242/Zfs_overview https://www.academia.edu/20291242/Zfs_overview >The file system that has come closest to our design principles, other than ZFS itself,is WAFL[8],the file system used internally by Network Appliance’s NFS server appliances.

It was! And Apple seemed fine with including DTrace under the CDDL. I’m not sure why Apple wanted some additional arrangement but they did.

by ahl 1y ago

It was! And Apple seemed fine with including DTrace under the CDDL. I’m not sure why Apple wanted some additional arrangement but they did.

ethbr1 1y ago

The argument advanced in the piece isn't without merit -- that ripping out DTrace, if subsequent legal developments demanded it, would be a heck of a lot easier than removing a filesystem that would by then contain massive amounts of customer data. And given what a litigious jackass Larry Ellison / Oracle is, I can't fault Apple for being nervous.

mixmastamyk 1y ago
Ironic since the post above tells the story as LE saying no to Jobs.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  There's always two sides to one story. And Jobs was not the kind of person to take no for an answer. I've known other narcissists and they've always seen friends as more of a resource than someone to care about. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Another rumour was that Schwartz spilling the beans pissed Jobs off, which I wouldn't really put past him. Though I don't think it would have been enough to kill this. I think all these little things added up and the end result was just "better not then".
cryptonector 1y ago
No, it was that Apple wanted to be indemnified in the event that Sun/Oracle lost the NetApp lawsuit.

cryptonector 1y ago

The NetApp lawsuit. Apple wanted indemnification, and Sun/Oracle did not want to indemnify Apple. At the time that NetApp filed its lawsuit I blogged about how ZFS was a straightforward evolution of BSD 4.4's log structured filesystem. I didn't know that to be the case historically, that is, I didn't know if Bonwick was inspired by LFS, but I showed how almost in every way ZFS was a simple evolution of LFS. I showed my blog to Jeff to see how he felt about it, and he didn't say much but he did acknowledge it. The point of that blog was to show that there was prior art and that NetApp's lawsuit was worthless. I pointed it out to Sun's general counsel, too.

tw04 1y ago
While I was disappointed that NetApp sued, the ZFS team literally referenced NetApp and WAFL multiple times in their presenations IIRC. They were kind of begging to be sued. Also, according to NetApp, "Sun started it". https://www.networkcomputing.com/data-center-networking/netapp-smacks-sun-with-patent-suit https://www.networkcomputing.com/data-center-networking/neta...
- cryptonector 1y ago
  Ok? So what?
- bcantrill 1y ago
  No, the ZFS team did not "literally reference NetApp and WAFL" in their presentations and no, Sun did not "start it" -- NetApp initiated the litigation (though Sun absolutely countersued), and NetApp were well on their way to losing not only their case but also their WAFL patents when Oracle acquired Sun. Despite having inherited a winning case, Oracle chose to allow the suit to be dismissed[0]; terms of the settlement were undisclosed. [0] https://www.theregister.com/2010/09/09/oracle_netapp_zfs_dismiss/ https://www.theregister.com/2010/09/09/oracle_netapp_zfs_dis...
  - tw04 1y ago
    We can agree to disagree. Your own link states that Sun approached NetApp about patents 18 months prior to the lawsuit being filed (to be clear that was Storagetek before Sun acquired them): >The suit was filed in September 2007, in Texas, three years ago, but the spat between the two started 18 months before that, according to NetApp, when Sun's lawyers contacted NetApp saying its products violated Sun patents, and requesting licensing agreements and royalties for the technologies concerned. And there was a copy of the original email from the lawyer which I sadly did not save a copy of, as referenced here: https://ntptest.typepad.com/dave/2007/09/sun-patent-team.html https://ntptest.typepad.com/dave/2007/09/sun-patent-team.htm... As for the presentation, I can't find it at the moment but will keep looking because I do remember it. That being said, a blog post from Val at the time specifically mentions NetApp, WAFL, how the team thought it was cool and decided to build your own: https://web.archive.org/web/20051231160415/http://blogs.sun.com/val/ https://web.archive.org/web/20051231160415/http://blogs.sun.... And the original paper on ZFS that appears to have been scrubbed from the internet mentions WAFL repeatedly (and you were a co-author so I'm not sure why you're saying you didn't reference NetApp or WAFL): https://ntptest.typepad.com/dave/2007/09/netapp-sues-sun.html https://ntptest.typepad.com/dave/2007/09/netapp-sues-sun.htm... https://www.academia.edu/20291242/Zfs_overview https://www.academia.edu/20291242/Zfs_overview >The file system that has come closest to our design principles, other than ZFS itself,is WAFL[8],the file system used internally by Network Appliance’s NFS server appliances.