On Thu, 4 May 2000, Alexander Viro wrote:
> On Thu, 4 May 2000, James Sutherland wrote:
>
> > On the contrary. Look at the issues with the NTFS driver now, for example:
> > if the Windows [NT] source were available (with the restriction on patent
> > usage) we could just read the source, and make the Linux driver work
> > perfectly (well, as well as their version does, anyway :P)
>
> BS. Different model, different kernel API, different code practices
> to the degree that their code doesn't look like C. Besides, we _have_
> free <RMS-bait excuse="sorry, couldn't resist"> as in _really_ free, BSDL
> rather than GPL</RMS-bait> NTFS driver that works. For UNIX kernel, BTW.
> And it helped us which way?
I wasn't suggesting COPYING the driver from NT! My point was that the FS
is not well documented. Where is this working NTFS driver, by the way, and
why didn't you suggest it to the user who was unable to read his NTFS
partition with the one in the kernel ATM?
> > Equally, the Wine project is hampered by the many undocumented API calls
> > used - while you can have "undocumented" calls in an open source OS,
> > there's nothing to stop you analysing the source code itself.
> >
> > Wine, Samba, the Linux kernel - there are plenty of open source projects
> > which would benefit from this.
>
> >From the pile of crappy code? Have you _ever_ read the code from project
> that went hypercritical several years ago? As in, fixing the bug produces
> more than one new bug... No?
I wasn't suggesting trying to FIX NT or '9x - just use the source code to
supplement documentation on all those undocumented function calls.
Kernel32, for example, exports a whole category of functions by ordinal
only - we don't even have the function names, let alone any description of
what they do! The source would certainly help there...
> BTW, what does it do on l-k?
The thread started here; also, documentation of Windows [NT]'s innards
could be useful in parts (like the NTFS driver).
James.
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