John Summerfield debian@herakles.homelinux.org wrote:
David G. Miller wrote:
It wouldn't surprise me if NTFS was encumbered by some sort of Micro$oft intellectual property claim. This would be sufficient to cause Red Hat to not build their kernel with it even if all it takes to make it work is to enable the feature in the kernel build.
Debian's as paranoid as anyone, but it ships NTFS.
Additionally, I've never heard any claims regarding HPFS, and as I came to Linux from OS/2, I think I'd remember such. And, RH has never, to my recollection, shipped HPFS either.
See one of the many flame wars over MP3 or some other IP encumbered technology as to why RH won't include it (and risk getting sued).
Cheers, Dave
I vaguely recall that IBM wanted to open source HPFS at one time and was told by Microsquish that they wouldn't allow it. Funny that IBM went one better and open sourced JFS instead.
I'm in kind of the same boat as you since I was an OS/2 user before I switched to Linux. I think the HPFS information was from a discussion as to why IBM couldn't open source OS/2 as a means of continuing support. Remember, we're talking about the same Microsquish that has attempted to patent the FAT file system. I'd be very surprised if NTFS wasn't IP encumbered. Debian tends to be very paranoid as to technical features and stability but they don't have the financial exposure that Red Hat has when it comes to infringing IP.
Cheers, Dave
David G. Miller wrote:
John Summerfield debian@herakles.homelinux.org wrote:
David G. Miller wrote:
It wouldn't surprise me if NTFS was encumbered by some sort of
Micro$oft > intellectual property claim. This would be sufficient to cause Red Hat > to not build their kernel with it even if all it takes to make it work > is to enable the feature in the kernel build.
Debian's as paranoid as anyone, but it ships NTFS.
Additionally, I've never heard any claims regarding HPFS, and as I came to Linux from OS/2, I think I'd remember such. And, RH has never, to my recollection, shipped HPFS either.
See one of the many flame wars over MP3 or some other IP
encumbered > technology as to why RH won't include it (and risk getting sued).
Cheers,
Dave
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.
Cheers, Dave
Could it be that Red Hat doesn't enable NTFS in their kernels because they simply don't want to support NTFS?
-Greg
Greg Bailey wrote:
Could it be that Red Hat doesn't enable NTFS in their kernels because they simply don't want to support NTFS?
Can't speak for RHEL, but for Fedora, I know the justifications for not enabling NTFS have only been legalese ones (and we're fighting this on OIN grounds).
-- Rex
On 4/4/07, Greg Bailey gbailey@lxpro.com wrote:
David G. Miller wrote:
John Summerfield debian@herakles.homelinux.org wrote:
Could it be that Red Hat doesn't enable NTFS in their kernels because they simply don't want to support NTFS?
-Greg
In a way.. the read/write support for NTFS has always been best as you can get by not having any specs. Back in 1999 there was some talk about having it in the 6.x releases, as many people said it was fully ready etc etc. The testing ended up being something like this:
Install NT-4.0 on system, install RHL-6.x with NTFS installed. See if you can mount system, read from system, and reboot into NT-4
We repeatedly ended up with dead NT-4 boots, while we could get NT-3.5 working. Later times with Windows 2000, XP etc have usually ended up with similar stories. While the support got better, the amount of eating the babies was still high enough that it is not commercially supportable.
Heck the amount of time I spent answering tickets that went like this was enough:
Customer: Your OS ate our HR system! We need it back right away. US: Be nice and calm customer down.. Customer (eventually); Well I installed 6.1 and then compiled the kernel with NTFS support to get the data off our HR system. US; well that was unsupported.. Customer: Well I am going to post to Slashdot about how crappy Red Hat support is. US: ok...
Customer posts bad experience (sans the part where they broke their kernel and used bad practices for moving data from a sensitive machine...)
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.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 10:43:38AM -0600, David G. Miller 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.
Pfft. They opensourced OS/2's JFS. I only wish it was AIX's.
[]s
- -- Rodrigo Barbosa "Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur" "Be excellent to each other ..." - Bill & Ted (Wyld Stallyns)
Rodrigo Barbosa wrote:
Pfft. They opensourced OS/2's JFS. I only wish it was AIX's.
Well, JFS2 on AIX is based on the same OS/2 JFS codebase. I wonder why 3ware recommends XFS in another thread (due to firmware upgrades) when it has big problems with most linux systems (with 4k stack).
Morten Torstensen wrote:
Rodrigo Barbosa wrote:
Pfft. They opensourced OS/2's JFS. I only wish it was AIX's.
Well, JFS2 on AIX is based on the same OS/2 JFS codebase. I wonder why 3ware recommends XFS in another thread (due to firmware upgrades) when it has big problems with most linux systems (with 4k stack).
Probably because so few use JFS even though it actually comes second in all fs benchmark tests while the other filesystems take turns at the top.
-
David G. Miller -
Feizhou -
Greg Bailey -
John Summerfield -
Morten Torstensen -
Rex Dieter -
Rodrigo Barbosa -
Stephen John Smoogen