[MIR] exfat-utils and fuse-exfat

[Jeremy Bícha]

Availability
============
Synced with Debian and it's intended for this to stay in sync. Built for all supported architectures.

Rationale
=========
udisks2 (2.1.7-3) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Promote exfat-utils from Suggests to Recommends. The exFAT file system is
    more widely used these days so we want to have support installed by
    default. (Closes: #812467)

exFAT is commonly used on larger USB drives or SD cards; in many cases pre-formatted that way from the manufacturer

Security
========
One open security issue for Ubuntu 14.04:
https://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-security/cve/2015/CVE-2015-8026.html

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/exfat-utils
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/fuse-exfat

Quality assurance
=================
- Please subscribe Ubuntu Desktop Bugs to this package.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/exfat-utils
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fuse-exfat
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=exfat-utils
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=fuse-exfat
https://github.com/relan/exfat/issues

(Fairly low number of bugs except for 24 open against Ubuntu's fuse-exfat

No upstream tests, no autopkgtest

Dependencies
============
check-mir reports all other dependencies are in main

Standards compliance
====================
3.9.8

Maintenance
===========
- Actively developed upstream
https://github.com/relan/exfat/releases
https://github.com/relan/exfat/commits/master

- Packages seems to be well-maintained in Debian. dh compat 9. short "dh7" rules. Not team maintained.

Background information
======================

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Because this was not processed yet and zesty will be released soon, I have dropped udisks2's Recommends on exfat-utils to a Suggests.

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/udisks2/2.1.8-1ubuntu1

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The exfat filesystem is under Microsoft patents and they don't allow free use, see https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/mtl/exfat-licensing.aspx

It means it's likely not installable by default in Ubuntu so unsure there is a point trying to get it in promoted...

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

based on the last comment, closing this as won't fix.

[Valorie Zimmerman (valorie-zimmerman)]

The Microsoft page referenced explicitly says:

It is important to note that open source and other publicly available implementations of exFAT do not include a patent license from Microsoft. A license is required in order to implement exFAT and use it in a product or device.

Please re-open and fix.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

@valorie-zimmerman: That seems to say that the FUSE exFAT implementation doesn't *include* a patent license, but that it would nevertheless *require* one in order to incorporate it into a product. As such it seems unsafe to include it in Ubuntu. You're quoting it as if it contradicts this, which I don't see that it does, but maybe I'm missing something; could you please elaborate on what you think Ubuntu can fix here?

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Since the last discussion on this bug report, Microsoft announced that they were supporting integration of exFAT into the Linux kernel (https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2019/08/28/exfat-linux-kernel/). I haven't worked out whether that changes the situation; if people still want to push for this, it may be worth seeing if we can get internal legal review to see whether this is safe now.