TrueNAS build system going closed source
github.com
github.com
> But I'd wager 99% of the folks commenting on this thread have never done a build from source before, nor would ever want to?
what an insensitive comment this is to anyone that has contributed. are they really saying "the source is available but it's fine if nobody can build it, who cares about building open source projects anyway?" what use is open source code that can't be built? another of their comments from the same thread:
> We even took protective measures to make sure the open source work we do stays open, by putting them under GPLv3 a while back.
this is almost exactly what minio did; I'm generally in favor of copyleft, but a copyleft license can absolutely be used as a tactic to prevent other commercial interests from benefiting from and supporting an open source project. they want exclusive rights to distribute proprietary versions while benefiting from open source contributors.
I decided to stay away from truenas for my recent nas build precisely because it smelled of enshittification, and it's unfortunate to see it trending further in that direction.
I have an old TrueNAS system based on FreeBSD and since I need to upgrade I might as well upgrade to something that’s turning bad.
I don't know that I can recommend arch+zfs to someone not familiar with arch linux though. zfs isn't in the standard repository so you have to either add the archzfs repo or add an AUR package. most people probably expect a NAS to auto update, arch linux sometimes needs manual intervention for updates, which I only tolerate because I update multiple arch linux systems at the same time. and with zfs being out-of-tree, sometimes kernel updates can theoretically break it, though with linux-lts that seems to be very rare.
I have a remote system for security footage with debian+btrfs, which has basically none of these issues. installation is easier, btrfs is built into the kernel, I've had no trouble with automatic updates, it's been rock solid. btrfs still does the important stuff like software RAID, snapshots and scrubbing, and it's much easier to add more drives compared to ZFS. just note that I think btrfs has a bit worse performance. totally adequate for a 2.5 gigabit NAS, but a little slower for random access if you do work directly on the NAS like I do. it's also historically not been as reliable as ZFS, but that reputation seems years old at this point.