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.
Oracle's beef with Google comes from actions that occurred before Java was open sourced.
It's hard to see how the two scenarios are even remotely related, other than "Oracle"