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Microsoft Litigation vs. Linux NTFS Kernel Support
OrenWolf writes: "Microsoft has threatened to sue the current developers of r/w NTFS support in the Linux Kernel. Details can be found in the current Kernel Traffic post." No, your honor, we aren't a monopoly.
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The great Double-Y Jerkey Merkey was under NDA with MS.
If he leaked trade secrets.. Then he's gonna get sued. Would serve him right.
He and his company have contributed NOTHING to Linux development except a lot of useless flame wars on l-k. He's not a NTFS developer, he had just joked about providing NDAed info to the Linux developers on l-k and MS reminded him to sit where he belongs (in their pocket).
I wouldn't listen to a damn thing that moron says.
[anonymous to prevent JM from throwing his lawyers my way]
Yes, all internal links are broken :)
The Virtual Bookcase: book reviews
I'm not really sure of the details (I don't follow the kernel list), but I'm sure someone can expand on this.
Jeff V. Merkey used to work at Novell on Netware. He then left and went and developed something (a cleanroom NDS?) for a startup that had a fairly close relationship with MS. (I think the idea was MS was going to use this to combat Netware - like I said, I'm hazy on the details.)
Anyway, as part of that, (I think) he got access to the NT code, which means potentially MS might have a case, if he signed NDAs
Summary: Jeff V. Merkey had some prior realtionship with MS, which might give them a case. The rest is just hazy memories - I'll dig and try and remember exactly what was going on.
Ext2 sucks. I run Linux at home and if I used Ext2 not only would it be unreadable from W2K, it would also be unreadable from my windows95 partition. The thing is, we all have those MS-DOS tools that we would want to run on our Linux drives, but can't if you use ext2!
See how stupid that sounds? Obviously, you don't have to use non-FAT filesystems if you don't want to, but condemning something because it doesn't fit your particular lowest common denominator Win95 game box situation.
but at most places I worked, the C: was FAT while the raid drives were NTFS
Now imagine a Unix admin who installed the operating system on a partition with no file permissions and a file system known to be unstable. Wow, his Unix install would be almost as unstable as his Windows NT install!
I did NT admin for a long time (94-97), and I never understood why people used FAT OS partitions. You were bound to have a corrupted registry sooner or later. In a recovery situation, 9 times out of 10 DOS isn't going to help you, and you end up creating a parallel NT install so that you can mount the registry and fix whatever really went wrong, which is what you really should have done in the first place instead of messing with DOS.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
NTFS support in Linux kernel replies: "Sue? Me? Wait a minute! I'm not a person or corporation. Wait at least 'til I develop my own Artificial Intelligence. Then you can probably sue me. If I don't take over the world by that time, that is."
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Linux Kernel mailing list archive, with 133 messages from Jeff V. Merkey in the last 26 days, including his posts about Microsoft.
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NTFS and Linux aren't really compatible, due to VFS limitations. As the kernel currently stands, there is no way to access streams, extended attributes, or ACLs. Linus wants to provide a coherent way to access streams in Linux, but Cox, Viro, et al think the HFS kludge is a perfect way of doing it (this involves creating fake ".AppleDouble" directories on the fly). It seem to be their position that if it's not Posix, it's crap. It's Linus' position that lots of filesystems that support streams and/or EAs exist (NTFS, XFS, BeFS, HFS) and are in common use, and Linux therefore needs a standard way to access their features.
So, yeah, good NTFS support would be nice. But don't hold your breath. I doubt the "Core Developers" will allow Linux to fully support NTFS.
___________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I'd love to see Microsoft manage this. OK, so I wouldn't, but I'd love to see them fall on their faces trying. Sadly for them, it's already been very well-established in the courts that interoperability, even if it means reverse-engineering, is fair use.
:)
Now, the NDA thing is much more interesting, and could be more of a problem. However, Microsoft cannot possibly prove that any NDA's are being violated. To do so, they would have to disclose their source code -at least those parts of it which deal with NTFS- and we all know they'll never do that due to their irrational fear that if someone saw their source they might make something better (never mind that they already do this without having seen the Windows source, so I doubt it would change things much). I suppose it's possible; I've never seen the NT code (sometimes I wonder if Microsoft even lets its programmers see the Windows source), but there could be things in common between them. But how can I be certqain of this unless I can see both sources and compare them? I can't. Neither can a judge. Therefore, there's no way to prove this guy guilty, so Microsoft can't win this case.
But let them try. Let them waste millions on a case they cannot win. This'll be fun
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Wouldn't NTFS compatability in Linux allow anyone with a Linux micro-distribution(on a floppy) access the information on a computer running NT on NTFS? AFAIK the current situation is that even with local access, unless you have a l/p for NT you can't get to the info stored on the NTFS partition, even with a boot floppy.If so I could definately see this as a valid reason for Microsoft's anger, although not for grounds on which to sue.
- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.
So, when are the t-shirts printed with NTFS code coming out?
Okay, Jeff V. Merkey's company, the Timpanogas Research Group is a Microsoft ISV. Now this doesn't mean anything in itself, but some MS ISVs do have access to the NT code.
Here is a (google cached) post about some problems Merkey had with his open source NDS implementation - Novell wanted him to sign a NDA.
Read this:
and this:
Now if this David Gobel person really did write "NTFS for MS", and now he has some kind of relationship with Merkey, Merkey's company or Linux, there could be a problem.
Also, read http://www.zd net .com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,2426902,00.html for some more background (okay, it's ZdNet, so don't take it too seriously!)
Of course, I still don't know the details - just enough to annoy some people if I've got it all wrong!
Jeff Merkey is the head of a for-profit company, Timpaganos (or some such thing). There was some agreement between his company and M$, the exact nature of which I don't know.
<p>
When Jeff said, "Microsoft has threatened us with litigation due to our support of Linux NTFS development" the <b>us</b> he was referring to was his company, not <i>linux</i> proper.
<p>
Jeff was giving people a binary NTFS tool to help people recover their file systems after they got damaged by some bugs in the linux NTFS drivers. This is probably what Jeff is referring to when he says, "Microsoft demanded that we delete any and all NTFS tools we had been providing to customers..."
<p>
Micro$oft is NOT threatening linux. M$ is NOT trying to have the NTFS driver removed from linux proper. This is not clear in the linuxcare article, but is clear if you followed all of Jeff's (sometimes logic-challenged) posts. One final note, you have to mentally tone down posts from Jeff, he tends to be <understatement> overly dramatic </understatement> and has a strange combative/cooperative cycle of posts.
The article itself states that they asked MS for a license which allowed them to use the NTFS specs. An fs which was completely stolen^H^Hdeveloped by MS :) But thats not the issue; iirc MS has licensed NTFS and they own the specs. If you want to use it in another way then accessing the available NT routines you'll need a licence. Like it or not; thats MS decision and you can only respect it.
The way I see it these folks decided to break the agreement (see quote) and therefor also threw away their right to make use of the MS specifications and routines which allowed them to access the NTFS internals. So? Is MS evil just because they are defending their product here? Sure, MS usually takes actions which are highly controversial, their development of NTFS is right among those IMHO (remember hpfs?). But that does not mean that every action taken by MS is evil/monopolistic/unfair/dictating/ by default. Besides, please do not forget that we only see 1 side of the story here. We didn't even get to see the entire letter send by MS.
Anyway; these people should stop whining IMHO. If they want to develop NTFS based programs and don't want to be restricted by the will of MS they should do what other did before them; buy the appropiate MS development tools which gives them the right to use the NTFS specs in their own software. Whether that software is Linux or Windows based is irrelevant.
Yes Andre, they did, they accussed me of knowingly conspiring with Linus...
That bastard Linus, he has entered a conspiracy to destroy Microsoft!
I think, in general, that OSS gives Microsoft fits because it is something that they can't make go away by buying it. If your are used to innovating with your pocketbook that would really screw things up, maybe this is the beginning of plan B: Innovate with lawsuits.
Icebox
Let us say Microsoft does sue Linux for NTFS support. That means:
That Linux is good enough for them to worry about.
They publicise the fact the Linux has NTFS support
They publicise Linux in general
They unleash thousands of press articles on how Microsoft is scared and is having to rely on lawsuits to compete.
By keeping quiet:
Far less people would know Linux had NTFS support
They can keep up the pretence that they don't need to worry about those pseudo-Marxist hippie long haired hackers are up to.
-- Piracy is a vicitmless crime, like punching someone in the dark.
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
I also predict the death of the OS division within 5 years of the breakup.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I thought the DMCA supported reverse-engineering for interoperabillity? Compatability with a file system DEFINATELY is an interoperability issue. I think this "threat" is an attempt to scare these developers, and make companies like Red Hat (who would also be liable for distributing the kernel with this "infringing" work) scared that they will have to spend IPO money on lawyers rather than R&D
IMO, a classic case of M$ using threats to illegally maintain a monopoly.
BTW, a THREAT of a lawsuit, when groundless is actionable. If I were these developers, RMS, Linus, or Red Hat, I'd be sending copies of this threat to the Supreme Court and Judge Jackson.
I suppose this threat means that M$ has given up on making `Doze 2000 a better product than Linux and now have to take to the courts for protection?
In 2000 America, is a non-lawyer truly free?
Its not that simple.
Even if the people writing the code have written it from scratch and both they and Microsoft agree on that, they might have signed an NDA. (in this case, IIRC from reading LKML, that is what has happened)
The problem then comes down to being able to demonstrate that you haven't used any information provided under the NDA in writing the code. That can be tricky.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
There is misinformation here - the current Linux support for NTFS is nothing to do with Jeff Merkey or his company. AFAIK Microsoft has not sent any such threats to the developers of the Linux driver.
Reference: Linux NTFS page