Apple shuts down ZFS open source project

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Well, i had planned on writing more... but somehow this message posted itself, while i was still typing.
What's going on here?

I suppose you hit the magic key...

Alas, there is much of this I still don’t understand or appreciate.

From a practical perspective, what affect will this have on Mac users and the growth of the Mac community?

Well, let's see...

If you check Safari -> Preferences -> Advanced, you'll notice that there's a Press Tab to highlight each item on a webpage checkbox. Furthermore, although it's a little ambiguous, you'll note that if you don't have that checkbox checked, Option-Tab will produce the same result.

In any event, when you're typing a reply in the text-entry box, the Submit button turns out to be the next item in the Tab queue (bonus points if you can figure out what determines the order of items in that queue). Dollars to donuts you hit an inadvertent Tab or Option-Tab while typing—thus highlighting the Submit button—then hit Return, thus effectively clicking the Submit button.

Elementary, my dear Itosis.

Option-tab then return (or enter) seems like the "magic" needed (as my pref has that tab feature unchecked). Funny that's never happened before in probably some 20,000 posts (including other sites) over a decade. But -- since it's at least possible things could have happened that way -- i'll just accept your theory. [it felt kinda eerie too... let's save that 'ghost in the machine' stuff for next weekend. ]

I'm not sure, really.

The effect on me (and probably others) was mostly one of surprise. ZFS was initially rumored to arrive in 10.5 i think... but it never materialized. One advantage of ZFS was supposed be even fewer data loss issues due to filesystem corruption (i think), so that part sounded real good.

The dismal state of personal data storage and the Sun light at the end of the tunnel [November, 2005]

It was just weird because a lot of folks got all psyched up waiting for it to get here (helped along by a few pages at apple.com over the past 2 years or so), and then this week: POOF... all gone.

Reminds me a bit of OpenDoc.

I think this got doomed the day Oracle bought Sun. Jobs and Ellison must not be best buds any more.

The AppleInsider article is a good one, but does not make it clear how close the features of ZFS and BTRFS were becoming. It does make sense not to develop both, especially if it is true that ZFS has patent dispute issues:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs

Some links i picked up in another thread...

... on how the problem was likely a matter of licensing: "Apple cans ZFS project" [zfs-discuss archives at opensolaris.org]

... on how Apple will probably roll their own FS (eventually): "The loss of ZFS"

Thanks. I feel less of a sense of loss and more optimism for the future after reading that blog posting.