Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755432AbZF1UN0 (ORCPT ); Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:13:26 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752696AbZF1UNR (ORCPT ); Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:13:17 -0400 Received: from bedivere.hansenpartnership.com ([66.63.167.143]:33995 "EHLO bedivere.hansenpartnership.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752568AbZF1UNQ (ORCPT ); Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:13:16 -0400 Subject: Re: [PATCH] Added CONFIG_VFAT_FS_DUALNAMES option From: James Bottomley To: "Eric W. Biederman" Cc: tridge@samba.org, john.lanza@linux.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, OGAWA Hirofumi , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, Dave Kleikamp , Steve French , Mingming Cao , Paul McKenney In-Reply-To: References: <19013.8005.541836.436991@samba.org> <19014.54044.484370.187018@samba.org> <19015.482.794111.612472@samba.org> <87ab3sx4ch.fsf@devron.myhome.or.jp> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:13:14 -0500 Message-Id: <1246219994.4190.28.camel@mulgrave.site> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.24.1.1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2055 Lines: 49 On Sun, 2009-06-28 at 12:51 -0700, Eric W. Biederman wrote: > OGAWA Hirofumi writes: > > > tridge@samba.org writes: > > > >> > Given what you have said our interpretation of vfat has a bug, > >> > and that small change is a candidate for -stable. If it could > >> > be it's own patch. > >> > >> good point. > >> > >> Hirofumi-san, would you support putting the last_u change into stable? > > > > If you want, I have no problem to do. However, I'm not thinking that > > part is a bug. And -stable rule is also "a real bug that bothers > > people", but there is even a no bug reporter which tell actual problem. > > > Tridge. Is there any reason to believe that Microsoft will continue > to treat Longfilenames without short filenames as valid in vfat? > > If this turns into a contest of who can do the silliest things in > their vfat code microsoft could easily introduce a stricter directory > parser and cause all kinds of grief. > > It wouldn't even surprise me if you haven't seen such shenanigans > while working on samba. If you own the platform, like Microsoft does, there are many things you *could* do to make life difficult for others (like shipping a slightly incompatible version of java, for instance ...). However, having had one or two consumer and regulatory backlashes from shipping updates primarily designed to hobble what you think of as a competitor, you tend to be much more wary about doing it so openly ... particularly when you're trying to convince a wary customer base that you're the champion of interoperability nowadays. The bottom line is that we need to consider the current patch on its merits for evading the vfat patent. Speculating about what Microsoft might or might not do to retaliate doesn't really help with this. James -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/