During the discussion on the separation of responsibilities concerning the maintenance of filesystem code and VFS-related drivers, Linus Torvalds expressed willingness to directly accept patches for a new implementation of the NTFS filesystem if Paragon Software takes on the role of maintainer for the NTFS filesystem in the Linux kernel and obtains confirmation from other kernel developers who have reviewed the code for correctness (apparently, confirmations are already in place).
Linus noted that among the VFS kernel developers, there are no individuals responsible for accepting pull requests for new filesystems, so such requests can be sent directly to him. Overall, Linus hinted that he does not see significant issues with accepting the new NTFS code into the kernel, as the deplorable state of the old NTFS driver is untenable, and there have been no substantial complaints about Paragon's new driver over the past year.
Over the past year, 26 versions of ntfs3 patches have been proposed for review on the linux-fsdevel mailing list, addressing the raised concerns, but the issue of inclusion in the kernel has stalled due to the inability to find a VFS maintainer who could make decisions on conceptual matters — such as what to do with the old ntfs driver and whether to implement outdated FAT ioctl calls in the new driver.
The code for the new NTFS driver was opened by Paragon Software in August of last year and differs from the existing kernel driver by enabling write mode. The driver supports all features of the current NTFS 3.1 version, including support for extended file attributes, data compression modes, efficient handling of holes in files, and journaling recovery for integrity restoration after crashes.
Source: opennet.ru
