Tuxera signs up with Microsoft

Posted Aug 26, 2009 21:46 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333)
Parent article: Tuxera signs up with Microsoft

There is not anything in the press release to indicate that they are
shipping proprietary modules or that they are shipping even a proprietary
FUSE userland application.

There is no indication of anything of that nature.

The only thing that is in press release is that they signed a agreement
with Microsoft to get access to the exFAT documentation and join their
vendor program.

So everybody seems to be jumping to conclusions here.

--------------------

And yes the GPL is fuzzy.

> In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program
> with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a
> storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the
> scope of this License.

Shipping a embedded product running Linux is not mere aggregation.

So there is no exception of that sort to cover your ass if your shipping
proprietary software in a embedded device running Linux. Whether or not your
violating the license in that state is best described as "Not Defined" by
the license and if the license attempted to clarify it's likely that the
clarification would be invalid.

The GPL does not have the legal authority to dictate what is "derivative"
software. Its a legally defined copyright concept and is ultimately up for
a judge to decide.

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Tuxera signs up with Microsoft

Posted Aug 26, 2009 22:04 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses)

The implementation is clearly proprietary. Care for a volume deal? Among other things, you get "30-50 times more file system performance compared to the generic open source drivers." I can't tell if it's kernel- or user-space, though.

Tuxera signs up with Microsoft

Posted Aug 26, 2009 23:07 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Well the page your linking to there is talking about NTFS with that volume
deal and it's targetting companies that cannot use the NTFS-3G code and
related tools because it's GPL'd.

I suspect the promise of 50x improvement in performance over generic drivers
is due to the fact that a embedded programmer would be able to work
directly
with the NTFS-related functionality by using the code directly in their
applications instead of going through the file system/fuse interfaces. Much
of it is, of course, marketing hyperbole, but in low-resource environments
I can certainly see the advantage of embedding the ability to use NTFS
storage directly into a application.

So at least with the NTFS stuff it's apparently talking about dual-
licensing the code and consulting services.

I wouldn't be surprised either way if Exfat support was proprietary or will
be open eventually or whatever.

(and I wonder why with webkit browsers they always insist on inserting
newlines everywere while with firefox they don't...)