Insiders info...

[gnu_rocky]

Ever thought to take a Microsoft employee hostage and demand the NTFS documentation or else... HA HA HA! Just kidding. Actually, I was wondering if there my be some former Microsoft employees floating around somewhere to talk to about this sort of stuff, like getting secret NTFS secrets, snippets of source code, or what have you. I know a friend who knows a former Microsoft employee and he was sorta high up there I think... ahh who knows.

[Ged]

Former microsoft employees are not allowed to work on the project.

Also, snippets of code are completley out of the question.

[gnu_rocky]

Ok. I'm sorry. I should had known better. We have to play our cards right if we are to suceed legally.

[Jaix]

Well, shotcuts or this kind is not an option for ReactOS, there is perferctly legal shortcuts possible to take though, like using code from other projects like http://www.linux-ntfs.org/ or try to get for example http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/NtfsDos.html to let us use there driver, we can even be so bold that we use a free read-only driver to capture the real MS drivers from a harddrive and use them in ReactOS (if the owner have a legal copy of WindowsNT), but we HAVE to be perfectly legal else someone will press charges against us.

So if someone is good at pursuade people we could perhaps get SysInternals to contribute to us

[gnu_rocky]

So if someone is good at pursuading people we could perhaps get SysInternals to contribute to us

GREAT IDEA! I think I may know just the one! I'll keep you all posted.

[Lucractius]

Ooooohhhhh heck yes those guys know how to make windows rock

Id LOVE to hear anything of their opinions on the project, heck if they even contributed a snipped id be totaly blown away cause i bet it would be the greatest snippet ever lol

[steveh]

The only hope to resolve the legal issues would be if US government or EU commission FORCED Microsoft to fully publish ANY internal NTFS documentation.

As many others, i suppose this will not come true before 1 or 2 years, and reactos development should not be blocked on this question.

One solution is Linux "captive NTFS aupport" but this only works legally for people who have Windows on the same machine.

So let's not waste time and "ink" on the never ending NTFS subject, but consider implementation of REISERFS as mainstream filesystem in Reactos, and an NTFS read-only support for accessing windows data, and a reiserfs driver for windows to access REACTOS data.

[MarOrt]

I just stumbled on NTFS4Dos. I took a quick look at it and it seems like NTFSDos (from Sysinternals) however without needing the legacy Windows NTFS-driver.

I somewhere read it supports basic NTFS partitions and dynamic volumes (no RAID or Striping though.)

It's free for private use and € 19,00 for Business use.
Perhaps if we put our poor doggy face on, they could sponsor Reactos by letting us incorporate it as a "free" plugin... I think that the source is probably out of the question

http://www.datapol.de/dpe/recovery/ntfs/index.html