Hi Alan, Can you explain what standard you think should be applied to patent workaround patches for them to be acceptable? I'd like to know if there is the possibility of us finding some agreement in the future or not. For example, some possibilities might be: 1) no patent workarounds allowed in upstream kernel at all 2) the workaround must be shown to have 100% compatibility with all current and possible future devices 3) the workaround must be shown to have a high degree of compatibility with all the devices we have available to test with 4) the workaround must have the highest degree of compatibility that we can achieve with the most used devices, but some degree of interoperability problems are OK for less used devices. There are lots of possible levels in between these of course. I don't think you are advocating (1) or (2), as you seem happier with the "no long name creation" patch from May. I also know you want whatever is done to be a different filesystem name. I'm advocating (4) as a reasonable standard, although I'd like to achieve (3) if we can. Whether we can actually achieve (3) will depend on the results of further testing (see my messages to Jan on that for example). I apologise if you don't think this is a reasonable way to phrase the question. As you are the most vocal opponent of the patch, I'd like to better understand what it would take for you to find a patch acceptable. Cheers, Tridge -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html