ntfs support in fc5

Brad Bonkoski bbonkoski at mediaguide.com
Thu Aug 24 16:26:25 UTC 2006


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 at light-bg.com 
> <mailto:fedora at light-bg.com>> 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?
>
>
>     --
>     Peter Kostov
>     Sofia, Bulgaria
>
>     Photographer, web designer,
>     3D modeling, informational services
>
>     Home site: http://www.light-bg.com
>
>     --
>     fedora-list mailing list
>     fedora-list at redhat.com <mailto:fedora-list at redhat.com>
>     To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Signing Off with Regards,
> Gayal Rupasinghe
> Get a Life, Trash ur XP. 




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