Re: [Linux-NTFS-Dev] About NTFS for Linux

[Andrew C. <cl...@gn...>]

On Sat, Nov 16, 2002 at 08:04:46PM +0300, Paul Boettcher wrote:
> SO, I HAVE VERY SIMPLE QUESTION:
> 
> Why  somebody  needs  to develop his own NTFS driver instead of making
> the  wrapper  for  standard  NTFS  driver  taken  from Windows NT/2000
> distribution package, just like "NTFS for Windows98" from Sysinternals?
> It will be:
> 1. Easier to do
> 2. Safer, because this is a standard driver from Microsoft which won't
>    spoil everything.

I'm not an NTFS developer, but here's my humble opinion:

(1) it probably isn't easier to do.  It might be easy "to do", but
it would be very hard to "get right" and maintain (IMHO).

(2) you would need a MS licence for each copy of GNU/Linux with NTFS
support.

(3) MS would probably try to hijack any such effort.

(4) it wouldn't be "free" in the GNU sense of the word.

Perhaps vmware + NT + file sharing would be a good interim solution,
if you don't like linux-ntfs.

Andrew