Apple reportedly cans ZFS open source project
A note at the site says: "The ZFS project has been discontinued. The mailing list and repository will also be removed shortly." In 2007, it was rumored that Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") would support ZFS (Zettabyte File System). ZFS was originally developed by Sun. It protects all files with 64-bit checksums to detect and fix data corruption and, as a 128-bit file system, can handle many orders of magnitude more space than current versions of Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. According to Sun, ZFS meets the needs of a file system for everything from desktops to data centers.
And according to a 2007 patent (number 20070112891) filed by Apple engineers, you can convert millions of computers to a new file system via a handy file system converter that changes the file system without touching the files. The patent could have theoretically made HFS to ZFS conversions fast and painless.
However, that never happened. By June Apple had removed all mention of ZFS from its web site. So what's next?
"This leaves Apple with an unfinished, patent-encumbered file system and without an enterprise class partner to work with in developing the future of ZFS," says AppleInsider. "Were Apple to develop ZFS on its own, the technology would likely be relegated to pariah status by the rest of the industry. It remains to be seen whether Apple will begin working with Oracle to port the similar BTRFS to Mac OS X, or simply continue to add new features to HFS+ while monitoring the landscape for promising new file system options. In any case, ZFS appears to be very dead."