I'm more interested in what this means for Coraid? If Oracle buckles under then zfs ports to Linux et al. is doomed.
It's unlikely Oracle will buckle, although it's theoretically possible they'll lose. That would uphold NetApp's patents and potentially make the use of ZFS illegal without a license from NetApp.
(Speaking as someone looking to buy from Coraid...)Coraid's primary business, and certainly the vast majority of their product line, is about SAN storage: providing arrays of storage bits over the network. None of that has anything to do with ZFS. A common thing to do with those bits is create a file system for export (via NFS or whatnot) to other hosts; this is what Coraid's Z-series line does. ZFS is a popular option for how to implement that, and I gather what the Z-series uses internally (or what's NetApp on about?), but certainly isn't the only option. The installation I'm planning for, for example, hasn't been considering ZFS.
Anthony
PGP.sig
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
