A question about NTFS

Phil Schaffner Philip.R.Schaffner at nasa.gov
Tue May 17 14:18:07 UTC 2005


On Tue, 2005-05-17 at 09:42 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 09:39:48AM -0400, Phil Schaffner wrote:
> > May be reasonable, but ain't gonna happen with Fedora due to concern
> > about possible legal problems -
> >   http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/about.html
> > Easy enough to get the required modules from sources such as the above,
> > or roll your own if comfortable with kernel building as mentioned
> > elsewhere in the thread.
> 
> It's odd to me that shipping the source is somehow legally different in this
> case than shipping with the option enabled. But hey, I'm not a lawyer.

Agree that this seems a rather fine legal distinction, but Red Hat has
been pretty hard-line on this issue for some time.  Easier to understand
the problems with DVD/music decoding that require proprietary, patented,
and/or licensed technology; OTOH you can't get much more proprietary or
legally aggressive than the folks in Redmond.

Phil





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