ntfs

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003, Daniel Huettl wrote:

> Please consider including the ntfs module. It is an absolute nuisance to 
> have to compile it oneself. The module works perfectly well, and people 
> have been clamouring to have it included for over a year now:
> 
>    https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=65749

one of the comments from a RH person at that bug from last year
states that it must be "legally possible/sensible" to do so,
neither of which seems to make much sense.

it must clearly be legal since the source for the module is 
included -- you simply have to compile it in.  i don't know if
this is an issue any more, but saying it's illegal to ship an
NTFS-enabled kernel is like saying, "i can't sell you a loaded
gun.  but, hey, i can sell you an unloaded gun.  and then i can
just sell you the bullets separately at the same time."

and what about it being "sensible"?  as long as using NTFS
access in read-only mode is safe, i see no problem.  if people
want to take a chance and use read-write mode, that's their
choice.  but i'm hoping there's no *conceivable* way that simply
reading an NTFS partition can corrupt data.  any module that does
that is unspeakably badly written, no?

so, if RH doesn't want to enable read-only HTFS support out of
the box, it would be interesting to know why not.

rday