The Future of the NTFS Linux Driver as Part of the Kernel is in Question

upstart writes:

The Future of the NTFS Linux Driver as Part of the Kernel is in Question:

Support in the Linux kernel for NTFS, the primary filesystem for Windows systems, has always been important for people who use both operating systems. The existing Linux NTFS driver has been unmaintained and has always lacked proper write support. A filesystem in userspace (FUSE) driver, NTFS-3G, came along, but since it operates in userspace, it isn't considered particularly fast.

So when last August, the German software company Paragon Software offered to open source its in-house developed NTFS3 driver to become part of the Linux kernel, the news was welcomed among the Linux community. However, the driver was a proprietary software sold commercially before that.

[...] However, the first steps of adopting the driver as part of the Linux kernel were accompanied by many strange events and misunderstandings.

The point is that a straightforward procedure like creating a pull request (PR) proved to be a difficult task for the driver developers at Paragon Software. After several failed attempts, the driver was still submitted as a single dump of 27,000 lines of code!

Despite all the glitches, the driver was eventually implemented, and on October 31, 2021, Linux kernel 5.15 was officially announced with the Paragon NTFS3 driver integrated into it.

Unfortunately, thus far, the code has not received any maintenance.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.