A Base Filesystem Project for macOS (opens in new tab)

According to Dropbox, it has performance implications and is complicated thereby introducing a large attack surface. For some reason, they believe their own kernel module is less complicated and easier to reason about than FUSE, despite having more in-kernel code and not being open source; I would venture to say their words about security are more about control of the attack surface rather than any actual implications about the quality of the FUSE code.

According to Dropbox it is okay to circumvent security mechanisms of the operating system (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338) unless the media discovers your shady way of tricking the user into granting you full system access.

Their lost a lot of their credibility in my opinion.

Are you saying you can write a 100% user-space "driver" that allows for `mount`ing into the regular file system? How does that work? Can a non-root user supply the code running to serve /some/path that is visible for any process on the system, even root?

Already exists, UDF. Built-in support on macOS, Windows, Linux.

Another option is NTFS, the one limitation is by default it is read only on macOs.

> vfat won because it works in Windows without additional drivers.

I would not understate that it is also very simple to write a driver for. The reasons for this have high overlap with the fact that the ondisk structure is crap. But it does mean that many people were able to write drivers.

as mentioned above, ntfs works, but you'll need a driver for linux and macOS, which isn't too bad, and easier than getting unix file systems on windows.

vfat only won in the sense that if you're forced to use windows you still have to use vfat. In every other context there is a better option. I haven't needed to move files to a windows box in 15 years so—to me—it's a massive surprise anyone still uses it at all.

Just don't use USB keys; they're terrible security-wise and you're forced to use technology built for your grandmother.

I tried UDF for a few months on a macOS/Linux/Windows triple boot. It doesn't work reliably enough. I've switched to ext2 using e2fsd and Paragon (which I paid for) on Windows and macOS respectively. Fingers crossed.

I wish someone would port F2FS to Windows and macOS. This could be a good starting point for macOS.

No, exFat is patent encumbered and isn't as simple and well documented as vfat (so non-Windows implementations are worse). vfat is still the common denominator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT#Restrictive_licensing_an...

exFAT suddenly dirty-dismounts both on windows and osx, and is hard to mount again for regular user. Tried it as common r/w storage for bootcamp -- complete trash, cannot be used for long-connected drives, hyperactive torrents, big files. Copying some files forth-back is okay though.

Far from being "simple to implement", it's patent encumbered, making implementations for many OSs highly unlikely.

> about efforts to bring a fuse alternative for windows in

You mean dokany? 'cause that one is one quite stable project.

Pretty soon, we'll just use XKCD numbers and not bother linking. We'll just call something or other "hey, that's a 927"