But we knew it all along
Infoworld published a follow-up clarifying Apple’s inclusion of ZFS in Mac OS X 10.5.0. And doing quite a bit of tap dancing.

Apple now says that the ZFS file system will be available in the forthcoming Mac operating system, sort of.
Seeking to clarify a statement made on Monday by Brian Croll, senior director of Mac OS X Product Marketing, to two InformationWeek reporters that Apple’s new “Leopard” operating system would not include the ZFS file system, an Apple spokesperson indicated that ZFS would be available as a limited option, but not as the default file system.

ZFS “is only available a read-only option from the command line,” according to an Apple spokesperson.

In a follow-up interview today, Croll explained, “ZFS is not the default file system for Leopard. We are exploring it as a file system option for high-end storage systems with really large storage. As a result, we have included ZFS — a read-only copy of ZFS — in Leopard.”

“Read-only means that at a later date, if there are ZFS volumes, those systems would be able to read ZFS volumes,” Croll added. “You cannot write data into the system. It will allow you to read ZFS volumes later.”

Asked whether ZFS might be implemented for Apple’s Xserve rack mountable server line, Croll said, “Where we head in the future, we’re not able to talk about.”

Apple omerta aside, the direction is clear even if the timetable is not.

Update: ZFS clone on Linux: Chris Mason announced that he’s releasing something that looks like a ZFS clone for Linux.

[ANNOUNCE] Btrfs: a copy on write, snapshotting FS

Maybe you could help him. [Thanks, Wes.]

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.