[oi-dev] Remnants... (was:Re: Resignation as OI Lead)

[Sašo Kiselkov]

On 08/29/2012 02:42 PM, Cedric Blancher wrote:
> This is bitter, but I can understand you. Illumos has been nothing
> than a job generator for ex-Sun employees, and even that space has
> become smaller and smaller and those depend on it will fight for the
> little room available.
> 
> Air is getting thinner, not only for OI but also Illumos itself... but
> that is a self-made issue: There has been too much focus on ZFS and
> it's "benefits", while ZFS has become better on Solaris 11, and for
> those who love open source with ZFS there is FreeBSD, where ZFS runs
> smoother and with less memory consumption than on Illumos. It also
> *feels* that innovation has stopped in Ilumos.
> 
> Each time I read Illumos these days I think about a word: Remnants -
> the leftover which was once a thriving empire.

As much as I am sad to see the chief of OpenIndiana leave (I'm an
exclusive OpenIndiana user myself), I would like to contest your claim
that ZFS innovation has stopped in Illumos. Just because your favorite
features haven't been implemented doesn't mean that it's not there:

 *) feature flags
 *) async destroy
 *) eliminate empty bpobjs

 (and my humble contributions)
 *) high-speed hash algorithms (though there is opposition to
    mainlining it)
 *) LZ4 compression
 *) l2arc compression

I also plan on tackling quite a few new subjects in the future (e.g.
multi-MB blocks, dedicated metadata devices, etc.), so

I highly recommend you go and subscribe to zfs at lists.illumos.org, you'll
see us very much alive over there. Also, don't look to Oracle for much
ZFS innovation. What advances they have released as part of Solaris 11
have already been in advanced stages of development by the time the
acquisition came around and before the kernel people diaspora.

Cheers,
--
Saso