Is there any patent issue for using ntfs-3g?
balisa opened this issue · 2 comments
There seems to be a lot of patent issues from Microsoft related to NTFS, so I have a few questions about it.
I would like to take the source code from https://github.com/tuxera/ntfs-3g, add some functions, and distribute the source code under GPL-2.0 to another repository. Is there a patent issue?
Also, I would like to ask if there is a patent issue when using the Source Code that I distributed in product.
NTFS is very likely too old to have any patent issue. NTFS-3G has been used by Linux distributions as commodified as Ubuntu and as far as I can tell they have not bumped into any issue of that kind. Taxer has been selling a commercial version with no issue too.
Something about doing stuff to this source code
Well, all I can tell you wrt GPL is that it frees you from any patents held by the writer of the code. It does not free you from Microsoft.
Closing this issue because it's a question that should be directed to the likely patent owner of patents that could apply to NTFS-related technologies, if any (i.e. probably Microsoft). It's not something that the authors of this project can answer with any legal authority.