Comment 11 for bug 75574

Posted to the kernel mailing list, which so far has a response from Alan Cox, which indicates that (1) at the time it was written, this behavior was mandated by standards from the Large File Summit, and so was correct, and (2) those standards may have been "subsumed" by SUSv3, so patches adjusting behavior to match that just might be accepted. :)

The previous patch doesn't completely address the problem (for instance, old ReiserFS 3.5 objects on a 3.6+ system). I'll do a little more thorough check for the problem, and submit a new patch.

Kernel mailing list thread: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/browse_thread/thread/5bee5c7f7405233e/b8e06b88a8520973