Concerns Raised Over The "New" NTFS Linux Driver That Merged Last Year

[bug77]

"ghosting all of us"? The fuck is wrong with you? Paragon has given us a great working driver which needs minor fixes here and there. OK, Konstantin has stepped away from maintaining it, so fucking what? No one in the fucking community can step up? Just "I vote to remove"?

For years the whole community asked for a native driver, the one was given with no strings attached, oh, god, no one actually cares or wants to continue developing it.

Just like two years ago Linus removed the console scrollback buffer in the kernel and ... while hundreds of people lamented it, the feature has not been reimplemented and no one effectively gave a fuck.

Again, the open source community is either corporations which use it to extract profits or freeloaders who claim they love Open Source while doing effectively nothing for it, not even contributing financially.

I'm sure as hell, we'd had volunteers willing to do the work, had it been paid. Alas, in the magical Open Source land things appear out of thin air. Oh, wait, they don't.

Keep on churning accusations against ... Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, etc. etc. etc. Just never look in the mirror.

Well, you're right for the most part.
But there is an official maintainer for this and it has apparently gone silent. These discussions need to happen in order to move things forward, whether that means forking or replacing the driver with something else.

[andrebrait]

What? These two filesystems are developed only for Windows. Exfat specifications were released by Microsoft but the code was actually contributed by Samsung.

I think you misread the original poster of the message you quoted.

He said Microsoft developed the file systems, not the drivers for them. The Linux drivers were contributions by others, as you said.

The original poster is implying Microsoft, which developed the file systems, should also develop drivers for Linux, since they "love Linux and OSS" as their marketing campaigns claim they do. Instead, 3rd parties are left to implement drivers for those technologies, implying Microsoft's "love" is only when it's convenient for them to say they love Linux while focusing on making Linux useable on their platform in ways that appease developers (mainly those who use Linux as a server or development platform) but not contributing to areas that improve its usability as a desktop operating system (such as drivers for those Microsoft file systems).

EDIT: all those things make sense for Microsoft as a company. Loving Linux doesn't necessarily mean loving it as a replacement for your main OS product, of course. And no one has the obligation to code stuff, any stuff, including drivers for their own file systems. But I do understand why that feels hypocrite and a dick move, overall.

[birdie]

I think you misread the original poster of the message you quoted.

He said Microsoft developed the file systems, not the drivers for them. The Linux drivers were contributions by others, as you said.

The original poster is implying Microsoft, which developed the file systems, should also develop drivers for Linux, since they "love Linux and OSS" as their marketing campaigns claim they do. Instead, 3rd parties are left to implement drivers for those technologies, implying Microsoft's "love" is only when it's convenient for them to say they love Linux while focusing on making Linux useable on their platform in ways that appease developers (mainly those who use Linux as a server or development platform) but not contributing to areas that improve its usability as a desktop operating system (such as drivers for those Microsoft file systems).

EDIT: all those things make sense for Microsoft as a company. Loving Linux doesn't necessarily mean loving it as a replacement for your main OS product, of course. And no one has the obligation to code stuff, any stuff, including drivers for their own file systems. But I do understand why that feels hypocrite and a dick move, overall.

Just like I said corporations care about Open Source only when it means more profits one way or another. Rewriting the Windows NTFS driver for Linux (the underlying APIs are wildly different, so porting is not an option) doesn't mean any additional profits or goodwill for Microsoft considering ntfs-3g already exists.

BTW, ntfs-3g can also be considered a dead project. It's not seen any major fixes/new features for at least a couple of years now. It doesn't need any maintenance though considering FUSE unlike the Linux kernel offers stable APIs (it's all in userspace).

[Anux]

Time for a rewrite in rust I guess.

[L_A_G]

Regardless of the reason why the designated maintainer has basically stopped doing his job (can't be bothered, illness or over-worked) I'd say this does bring forward a very real question: Should there be a process by which the role of maintainer for subsystems could be removed and given to someone else without the previous maintainer's consent?

IMHO there absolutely should be one and this is basically the perfect first example case for using it. We've got a clear case of a negligent maintainer, work that needs to be carried out and someone both able and willing to take over the role.

[ntropy]

This imho shows, why Microsofts apparent support for OSS is only hollow marketing for the masses and for maintaining an image, and has not led for any actions and changes outside some of their unimportant side projects which they don't rely on. At places where they could help Linux, which they claim to love, they rely on 3rd-parties to do their work for them (NTFS, exFAT) instead of contribuiting directly, and their "support" consists of nothing but not suing and not enforcing patents.

And supporting OSS makes it easier to use OSS for their own software. Otherwise if they'ld ignore it (whats impossible) or be against it (what would be suicide). they had a problem.

[bug77]

I think you misread the original poster of the message you quoted.

He said Microsoft developed the file systems, not the drivers for them. The Linux drivers were contributions by others, as you said.

The original poster is implying Microsoft, which developed the file systems, should also develop drivers for Linux, since they "love Linux and OSS" as their marketing campaigns claim they do. Instead, 3rd parties are left to implement drivers for those technologies, implying Microsoft's "love" is only when it's convenient for them to say they love Linux while focusing on making Linux useable on their platform in ways that appease developers (mainly those who use Linux as a server or development platform) but not contributing to areas that improve its usability as a desktop operating system (such as drivers for those Microsoft file systems).

EDIT: all those things make sense for Microsoft as a company. Loving Linux doesn't necessarily mean loving it as a replacement for your main OS product, of course. And no one has the obligation to code stuff, any stuff, including drivers for their own file systems. But I do understand why that feels hypocrite and a dick move, overall.

First, we should acknowledge that if Microsoft didn't do their part and gave the blessing for exFAT and NTFS, there would still be no drivers installed by default.
Second, yes, Microsoft "loves" OSS. As long as it brings them more AD or Azure users that is.
Third, as pointed out above, this is Paragon's mess, Microsoft has little to do with it.
Fourth, NTFS support is so funny when you realize Windows' fast shutdown leaves the file system where Linux can't safely write it anyways.
Fifth, having NFTS around in 2022 is a testament to how good DEC's engineers were.

[CommunityMember]

NTFS and exFAT are both Microsofts file systems. Microsoft is developing them, Microsoft is deciding where to take them, so they should maintain a driver for it.

So, to follow your logic, others should be able to tell *you* how to spend your revenue (income)?

[CommunityMember]

Regardless of the reason why the designated maintainer has basically stopped doing his job (can't be bothered, illness or over-worked) I'd say this does bring forward a very real question: Should there be a process by which the role of maintainer for subsystems could be removed and given to someone else without the previous maintainer's consent?

There are such processes. For what should be obvious reasons those processes include multiple steps and validations to insure that, indeed, the individual(s) are no longer considered to be good stewards of the subsystem in question. In practice, since no two situation are identical, there is always some elasticity in the details of the process and the time frames for any action(s).

[Terrablit]

Well, you're right for the most part.
But there is an official maintainer for this and it has apparently gone silent. These discussions need to happen in order to move things forward, whether that means forking or replacing the driver with something else.

Agreed. Other valid complaints:

* Still no NTFS utility source despite claims that it's coming. FS utilities are a very important part of being a supported filesystem in the mainline kernel. How are you supposed to check the filesystem without the utilities?
* Maintainer (Komarov) doesn't review patches - they either directly apply them or ignore them.
* The maintainer doesn't send their own patches for review either - they just directly apply them to their tree. They also don't submit PRs for the work they've done. Everyone who writes code in the kernel needs to get someone else to sign off.
* Basically nothing's made it into the kernel for 6+ months despite other people trying to contribute and submit patches because this person is the official maintainer and isn't following protocol or communicating.
* Maintainer can't handle things like branching and tagging in git to version and mark stable points.

Nobody wants to get tossed into the middle of someone else's work and made responsible for it, and that's what Paragon has done. I mean, props for finally contributing the driver and accommodating the kernel dev requests to get it mainlined. It was a milestone. But the job isn't done, and whoever's de-prioritized this at Paragon needs a reality check. Which is hopefully coming, now that there's some attention on their bad communication skills. Nothing like getting your company name in the news for code littering to clean up your act.