The New NTFS Driver Looks Like It Will Finally Be Ready With Linux 5.15

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The New NTFS Driver Looks Like It Will Finally Be Ready With Linux 5.15

It's looking like the new NTFS file-system kernel driver developed by Paragon Software and over the past year revised more than two dozen times could be ready for mainlining in the kernel in about one month's time when the Linux 5.15 merge window opens. Everything is finally aligning and looking like the code is in good enough shape for its initial merging though not necessarily replacing the existing NTFS driver at this point...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=New-NTFS-Likely-For-Linux-5.15

[doublez13]

Nice! It'll be pretty sweet to have a proper NTFS driver in the kernel when the Steam Deck launches.

[Danny3]

Finally !
This is wonderful news.
Many thanks to Paragon, Linus, and everyone involved !

[peterdk]

Great, still don't understand the reasoning why the open source it, but am very happy with it. Making the world a better place

[gnarlin]

Great, still don't understand the reasoning why the open source it, but am very happy with it. Making the world a better place

Because maintaining a giant file system patchset out of tree is a huge pain in the ass and you don't get the benefit of any large scale testing or vetting that mainline gets.

[ququk]

It was commercial product so they are deciding not to earn money from this anymore. And initially they were trying to offer their implementation of exfat (read only at that time). Hopefully we now have great implementation of exfat from samsung and great implementation of ntfs by paradox.

[Slartifartblast]

Excellent news

[jarekZ]

Great, still don't understand the reasoning why the open source it, but am very happy with it. Making the world a better place

maybe NTFS is losing its popularity among the device manufacturers so it was not so profitable for paragon to continue selling this driver as a proprietary product. On other hand, they're getting a lot of (good) PR from this story. Also, looks like the person sending these patches isn't just a developer, but an owner of this company. So he's doing it simply because he can, why not?

[CommunityMember]

Great, still don't understand the reasoning why the open source it, but am very happy with it. Making the world a better place

I believe there were a couple if things that helped the process. The first is that Microsoft joined OIN, which removed the IP issues with use of certain technologies in linux (it has always been unclear what, if any, patents exist on ntfs, but no one was comfortable being a test case). The second was that it seems likely that maintaining it (out of tree) for Paragon's customers was a cost without strong benefit for the number of sales they were seeing for the product (bring it in-tree means Paragon no longer needs to create per-kernel version modules, and also means customers using secure boot technologies could more easily use the driver without needing to install additional keys per machine).

So I believe the real answer was that it was about money. It is always about money.

[perpetually high]

So I believe the real answer was that it was about money. It is always about money.

Yup. True for many things. Money makes the go round, and that's not changing anytime soon