ntfs kernel module

Paul Iadonisi pri.rhl3 at iadonisi.to
Tue Oct 26 19:39:47 UTC 2004


On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 14:22, Dan Hollis wrote:

> Of course, rdesktop and samba are bundled in fedora, both of which have 
> _known_ patent problems.

  Patent numbers please.

  Wait.  Nevermind.  I really don't care.

  *sigh*   Here we go again.

<CONSPIRACY MODE=ON>
  Red Hat won't ship MySQL 4.x, NTFS, MP3 codecs, and GIF, for
idealogical reasons and nothing else.
  Red Hat 'cripples' KDE because they're in love with GNOME and want to
make KDE look bad.
  Red Hat sucks.
  Red Hat is the Microsoft of Linux.
</CONSPIRACY>

  People:  There are plenty of real problems to identify and squash.  We
don't need imaginary ones.  If you don't like the legal, pragmatic,
strategic or otherwise decisions Red Hat makes, then find another
distribution.

  You've been given a reason for NTFS not being built (patent
problems).  No one at Red Hat is obliged to give you a patent number to
convince you.  Either believe it and move on, or don't and sulk.  If Red
Hat employees have time to chase down their legal team and ask so they
can give you an answer and update fedorafaq.org, then fine.  But I
wouldn't hold my breath.

> Of course, rdesktop and samba are bundled in fedora, both of which
> have 
> _known_ patent problems.

  Every situation is unique.  Perhaps the samba and rdesktop developers
have strategically worked around the problems or mitigated the problems
significantly.  Or perhaps there's been precendence in the NTFS case,
but not the samba or rdesktop cases.  Whatever.  Citing these to
inclusions have near zero relevance to NTFS.  IANAL.  YANAL.  So neither
of us can really do a reliable analysis of the situation.

  I'm not trying to silence mentioning of things like this, but since
questions like this get asked a lot and then the accusations begin to
fly, I'm asking that people take a different approach rather than
endless threads-from-hell.  Try just asking if the situation has changed
and if no one knows, if someone at Red Hat would be willing to spend a
little time hunting down an answer.  If the answer is 'no, none of us
has time,' then accept it and move on.  If you expect more, your
potentially asking someone at Red Hat to put his job at risk by going
against what Legal has recommended.

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets




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