Gruber, who usually has good inside sources, on Apple dropping ZFS[1]:
> Word on the street in Cupertino is that dropping ZFS wasn’t an engineering decision, but a legal one, and it might have had something to do with Oracle’s acquisition of Sun. I don’t know if it was a problem with the terms of the CDDL license, general distrust/dislike for Oracle, or what — only that the word came down from legal that ZFS was a no-go.
Apple has a notoriously paranoid pack of legal sharks, and they clearly felt uncomfortable with something about the ZFS legal situation.
The unofficial word is that Apple wanted Sun to sign an indemnification agreement, Sun had agreed to sign it on the day that Oracle's acquisition of them closed and Oracle refused to sign it.
You are correct this happened pre-oracle, but note that it was confirmed by Sun's spokeperson.
(Also note that the national labs, who have been continuing ZFS on linux, are immune to a lot of these issues. Oracle literally cannot get an injunction against them on patent infringement issues, so they are guaranteed they can always work on it)
Open-source is great, but if that source is covered by patents you're potentially liable for damages. Nobody would ever willingly expose themselves to that.
When Apple dropped ZFS, Sun was in the middle of a lawsuit with NetApp regarding ZFS. If I recall correctly, Apple wanted Sun to be on the hook in the event of any possible patents, but they balked. Apple isn't going to touch ZFS.
Apple says they intend to open-source the file system in the docs.
Open Source: "An open source implementation is not available at this time. Apple plans to document and publish the APFS volume format when Apple File System is released in 2017."
It says they plan to document and publish the volume format but nothing about the source code of the implementation. It being "not available at this time" doesn't necessarily imply that it will be available in the future.
Neither the format nor implementation of Core Storage is documented by Apple. Near as I can tell not even an fs magic number is documented, i.e an offset and a signature that makes it possible to identify Core Storage physical volumes.
My understanding was that FaceTime and iMessage weren't open sourced because of issues related to a patent troll (VirnetX IIRC). I'd be interested in hearing from others that are more familiar with the situation.
Or perhaps concern with having to deal with 3rd party iMessage/Facetime clients while at the same time trying to maintain a high level of security. Apple doesn’t want anything to tarnish the security reputation of these products.
Not only that, but apparently Steve Jobs decided to just say that on stage and while it had been discussed a bit it wasn't the plan and came as a total shock to the people involved.
> Apple has a history of making false promises in regards to open sourcing products
No, not true at all. iMessage was never promised, mentioned, or even hinted at being open source. Also, on the FaceTime from they said that the underlying protocols would be submitted to standards bodies as an open standard - that's a completely different things from open source. And the reasons that Apple didn't wind up doing that are well known (lawsuit from patent trolls).
Sounds like you have an axe to grind or only listen to people who do...
