Last weekend, Slashdot unearthed a debate over system architecture that was simmering between key Linux kernel developers and a creator of Sun Microsystems Inc.’s next-generation file system, ZFS.

Like all good debates, this one reaches beyond the matter at hand--in this case file system design—towards deeper issues, namely how projects as large as operating system development should be managed.

In a nutshell, Andrew Morton, one of the chiefs behind the Linux kernel, offhandedly remarked that ZFS is a “rampant layering violation,” meaning that (we assume) it blurs the lines between the OS, file system and physical storage. The comment sparked the ire of ZFS developer Jeff Bonwick, who argued on his blog that ZFS is effective precisely because it collapses the space between layers, that it simplifies by eliminating needless connections. In fact, he even goes a step beyond, and charges that the Linux community’s inability to collapse layers is one of their OS’s greatest weaknesses.

Piling on in the debate is Ars Technica’s John Siracusa who extended Bonwick’s sentiment by writing “Linux on the desktop, user-friendly Linux, the consumer Linux software market, Linux games—all the historic struggles in all these areas can be adequately explained solely in terms of this one failing.”

In other words, by not having one company oversee the entire OS development cycle, no one can take charge of large scale initiatives that cross boundaries.

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