Don Bedsole wrote: > I read that Fedora does not ship with the software to allow mounting of NTFS > partions (although it is easy to install). This is because of patent > concerns. Firstly, I am not a lawyer in any jurisdiction. I do not even know where you are. So I cannot give you any legal advice. But this is my understanding: > 1. Does anyone know what these patent concerns are? My understanding is that Microsoft has patents in certain jurisdictions surrounding NTFS. NTFS works in such a way that any software that reads (or writes) NTFS filesystems would have to do things that are covered by those patents. See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLegalIssues for a few more details. You may have noticed that there aren't many details about exactly what is claimed. This is deliberate: US law treats patent infringers more harshly if they were aware of the infringement. So it isn't in anyone's interests for this information to be widely disseminated. See, for example, http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5291403.html : An artifact of current patent law in the United States is that companies and individuals are discouraged from seeing if their products infringe, Ravicher said. "If you have knowledge and are found to infringe, a court can punish you," tripling financial penalties, Ravicher said. "If you say you didn't know and didn't see it, a court can't punish you. It's a screwed-up rule." Linux founder and leader Linus Torvalds has taken that approach. "Finding patent infringement has always been a responsibility of the patent holders," he said in a 2003 interview. "It is a fact that I do not encourage engineers to look up patent information." > 2. Is this only a problem for Fedora distributing the software, or would an > end user also run the risk of violating patents? It depends on where the end user is located. If the patents are valid in that jurisdiction, then yes, using NTFS software without a suitable licence from the patent holder would violate those patents. > 3. Would mounting an NTFS partition allow a Linux user to have access > to dlls which would make it easier to run Windows programs under WINE? There are other ways to get access to those DLLs, notably using a FAT partition. Microsoft DLLs helpfully tend to stick to 8.3-style filenames, so you don't even need the long filename support which has been under attention recently. Hope this helps, James. -- E-mail address: james | "We completely deny the allegations, and we're @westexe.demon.co.uk | trying to identify the alligators."
