Yes, "Microsoft controls NTFS" and perhaps could "change it at will" but would they? I think not. I am not worried about Microsoft introducing a change to the NTFS file system for the purpose of defeating use of NTFS with non-MIcrosoft operating systems. I have two main reasons for believing this.Ancient wrote:If focus isn't placed on open source file systems supported by Linux, ... ReactOS will limp along, but isn't likely to thrive. Support for more than NTFS read seems like a good thing, but Microsoft controls NTFS, and can change it at will.
(1) A breaking change to NTFS will affect hundreds of millions of systems running Microsoft operating systems that didn't get the update. Millions of external NTFS formatted hard drives will fail to be reliably interchangeable between computers running Microsoft operating systems. I think the technical headaches for Microsoft and loss of customer good will deters Microsoft from modifying NTFS in such a way.
(2) A breaking change to NTFS that adversely affects existing operating systems that interoperate with NTFS formatted storage devices may draw unpleasant attention from anti-trust regulators to Microsoft. This is not a regulatory and financial threat to Microsoft in the USA alone. The EU, South Korea, and now China (PRC) now enforce anti-trust rules. They could also levy serious fines and impose regulatory sanctions on Microsoft products sold in their countries.
I leave it to the judgment of the ReactOS developers (devs) which file systems to support. At least one dev is currently working to make the BTRFS file system operate with ReactOS. If I understand correctly, that dev intends to use BTRFS to test ReactOS's support of installable file systems. BTRFS is being used because there is no full-featured open source kernel level NTFS driver that operates with Microsoft Windows. In the past, there was an effort to make the EXT2 file system work with ReactOS. This remains incomplete and unusable. EXT2 was once ubiquitous in the Linux/BSD world.
USB boot is for another topic.