Greg Bailey wrote:
David G. Miller wrote:
John Summerfield debian@herakles.homelinux.org wrote:
I vaguely recall that IBM wanted to open source HPFS at one time and was told by Microsquish that they wouldn't allow it. Funny that IBM went one better and open sourced JFS instead. I'm in kind of the same boat as you since I was an OS/2 user before I switched to Linux. I think the HPFS information was from a discussion as to why IBM couldn't open source OS/2 as a means of continuing support. Remember, we're talking about the same Microsquish that has attempted to patent the FAT file system. I'd be very surprised if NTFS wasn't IP encumbered. Debian tends to be very paranoid as to technical features and stability but they don't have the financial exposure that Red Hat has when it comes to infringing IP.
Despite protestations from the lamentable SCO, IBM owns JFS, which originated in AIX.
However, the port was from OS/2.
Cheers, Dave
Could it be that Red Hat doesn't enable NTFS in their kernels because they simply don't want to support NTFS?
That is almost certainly the case; it's the reason it hasn't supported resiserfs, jfs, xfs etc.