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?
--
Peter Kostov
Sofia, Bulgaria
Photographer, web designer,
3D modeling, informational services
Home site: http://www.light-bg.com
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Signing Off with Regards,
Gayal Rupasinghe
Get a Life, Trash ur XP.
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