Re: ntfs support in fc5

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excerpt from the slashdot interview:

( http://interviews.slashdot.org/interviews/06/08/17/177220.shtml )

6) NTFS support in Fedora/RedHat
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward

If Fedora is actually not controlled by Red Hat anymore, and Fedora is user-oriented, why are both the only general-purpose GNU/Linux distributions that disable the NTFS driver from the Linux kernel?

Users do need this option (unlike Red Hat's customers, which are organizations as far as I know), and for evidence, Linux-NTFS is one of the projects with the most downloads on sourceforge.

I would like to add that NTFS is part of the mainline kernel. Compiling it as a module will cause it to not take any memory resources other than the few kilobytes on disk that any un-used hardware module is taking, unless of course the user has a mounted NTFS partition.

Red Hat's reason for disabling NTFS support was that RedHat is a US-based organization and that they fear patenting problems from MS. No law action was ever taken, and no actual patent was referenced. As far as I know, NTFS is not even patented or patentable. Fedora is not RedHat as you say, so this old reasoning is not exactly valid for Fedora. The IBM/SCO saga also cleared the issue about patents in the mainline kernel. Unless Fedora will change this simple flag in the kernel config file, I assume it is still controlled (and not only sponsored as some would say) by RedHat.

*Max:*

Heh, the actual question asked is a reasonable one. I think it's sad that it has to be surrounded with such vitriol. First of all, I am not a lawyer. In fact, the *actual* lawyers require that I tell you all that I am *not* a lawyer, for legal reasons. The AC who posted didn't mention his background, but I'm guessing that he/she is also not a lawyer.

Red Hat retains legal liability for the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is not a separate legal entity or organization. The Fedora Project receives a tremendous amount of resources (people, money, infrastructure, etc.) from Red Hat.

If you are a proprietary software company looking to exercise some patent litigation against an open source software company, Red Hat might not look like an awful choice.

In the past, Red Hat's counsel has been uncomfortable with enabling NTFS support in the kernel. Recently, the kernel has become protected by the Open Invention Network (http://www.openinventionnetwork.com <http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/>), which has been mentioned previously regarding Fedora and our inclusion of Mono (http://gregdek.livejournal.com/4008.html).

The question of NTFS in our kernels has been raised on the Fedora Advisory Board recently (within the last month or two). When we have an answer regarding that, the analysis and result will also be published transparently for people to comment on and discuss.

In closing, I would remind all of you that my only legal training involves at one time being able to recite the climactic scene from 'A Few Good Men' in Spanish.

Gayal wrote:
So Fedora supports NTFS or not??

On 8/24/06, *peter kostov* <fedora@xxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:fedora@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

    Hi,

    Is it possible to get NTFS support (reading) in FC5 without
    compiling a
    new kernel and how?

    If I have to compile a kernel, how can I obtain the current kernel
    config, to use it with make oldconfig?


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Signing Off with Regards,
Gayal Rupasinghe
Get a Life, Trash ur XP.


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