Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 20:02:07 +0100 From: Csaba Henk <csaba-ml@creo.hu> To: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@des.no> Cc: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [RFC] Remove NTFS kernel support Message-ID: <20080212190207.GB49155@beastie.creo.hu> In-Reply-To: <867ihdc34c.fsf@ds4.des.no> References: <3bbf2fe10802061700p253e68b8s704deb3e5e4ad086@mail.gmail.com> <70e8236f0802070321n9097d3fy1b39f637b3c2a06@mail.gmail.com> <slrnfqrp6g.i6j.csaba-ml@beastie.creo.hu> <867ihdc34c.fsf@ds4.des.no>
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On Sat, Feb 09, 2008 at 08:59:47PM +0100, Dag-Erling Sm??rgrav wrote: > Csaba Henk <csaba-ml@creo.hu> writes: > > Userspace components are LGPL / GPL licensed, kernel components are > > BSD licensed. > > Are you planning to have both the kernel part and the userland part > committed to base? > > How much work would you guess it would take to reimplement the userland > part under a BSD license? Well, I just started to work on a from scratch FUSE daemon library. The story is as follows: I wanted to put together a FUSE interface to sysctls, and I started it from scratch (so that it shall be clean licensing-wise, and for the fun of it). Then as things evolved, the generic code was distilled out to a library I named "folly", while the actual work on the sysctl fs has stalled. As a proof-of-concept I also wrote an userspace nullfs using libfolly. So I think: fuse4bsd (ie, the kld + the mount util) + libfolly + sysctl fs could go to base under BSD license. It also might make sense to rebase ntfs-3g atop of folly -- although it won't help ntfs-3g being GPL'd. So for ntfs-3g aka fusefs-ntfs there is no choice just GPL unless the authors decide to relincense it. (Rewriting ntfs-3g from scratch is not an option, there is too much expertise and man hour in that code base to be worth to waste time on it.) AFAIK libntfs is also GPL'd -- I don't know if its developers have ever thought of relicensing it to LGPL, I can imagine that they would be willing to speak about it. The fuse library is LGPL-d (although license sensitive developers should be aware of the fact that the skeletal/basic fs examples which ship with it and are a good base for writing new fs-es are under GPL!). Anyway, these are self contained bits, so I don't see it too much problematic to put all the userspace stuff into base (YMMV, of course...). Regarding libfolly: if anyone is interested, I can publish a snapshot, although the API is a moving target, and commenting/documenting it / polishing the command line interface it offers is still on the TODO list. (It's a small lib so its not that much work but now that I hit the POC level, the priority is of fuse4bsd...) Regards, Csaba
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