Editing Filesystem in Userspace (section)

== History ==
The FUSE system was originally part of ''AVFS'' (''A Virtual Filesystem''), a filesystem implementation heavily influenced by the translator concept of the [[GNU Hurd]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.draketo.de/light/english/free-software/some-technical-advantages-of-the-hurd|title=Some technical advantages of the Hurd|date=May 15, 2011|access-date=March 28, 2016}}</ref> It superseded Linux Userland Filesystem, and provided a translational interface using {{code|lufis}} in libfuse1.

FUSE was originally released under the terms of the [[GNU General Public License]] and the [[GNU Lesser General Public License]], later also reimplemented as part of the [[FreeBSD]] base system<ref>{{cite web|url=https://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD10|title=WhatsNew/FreeBSD10 - FreeBSD Wiki}}</ref> and released under the terms of [[BSD licenses#2-clause|Simplified BSD]] license. An [[ISC license|ISC]]-licensed re-implementation by Sylvestre Gallon was released in March 2013,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://openbsd.7691.n7.nabble.com/Fuse-and-sshfs-support-for-OpenBSD-td224422.html|title=openbsd dev - tech - Fuse (and sshfs) support for OpenBSD|access-date=2013-07-14|archive-date=2020-10-26|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201026101016/http://openbsd.7691.n7.nabble.com/Fuse-and-sshfs-support-for-OpenBSD-td224422.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> and incorporated into [[OpenBSD]] in June 2013.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=137027468819965|title='CVS: cvs.openbsd.org: src' - MARC}}</ref>

FUSE was merged into the mainstream [[Linux kernel]] tree in kernel version 2.6.14.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://osdir.com/ml/file-systems.fuse.devel/2005-09/msg00021.html|title=file-systems.fuse.devel - FUSE merged to 2.6.14! - msg#00021 - Recent Discussion OSDir.com|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160420173822/http://osdir.com/ml/file-systems.fuse.devel/2005-09/msg00021.html|archive-date=2016-04-20}}</ref>

The userspace side of FUSE, the {{tt|libfuse}} library, generally followed the pace of Linux kernel development while maintaining "best effort" compatibility with BSD descendants. This is possible because the kernel FUSE reports its own "feature levels", or versions. The exception is the FUSE fork for macOS, OSXFUSE, which has too many differences for sharing a library.<ref>{{cite web |title=libfuse/libfuse, the reference implementation of the Linux FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) interface |url=https://github.com/libfuse/libfuse |publisher=libfuse |access-date=9 January 2020 |date=9 January 2020}}</ref> A break in libfuse history is libfuse3, which includes some incompatible improvements in the interface and performance, compared to the older libfuse2 now under maintenance mode.<ref>{{cite web |title=libfuse3 ChangeLog |url=https://github.com/libfuse/libfuse/blob/master/ChangeLog.rst#libfuse-300-2016-12-08 |website=GitHub |access-date=9 January 2020}}</ref>

As the kernel-userspace protocol of FUSE is versioned and public, a programmer can choose to use a different piece of code in place of {{tt|libfuse}} and still communicate with the kernel's FUSE facilities. On the other hand, {{tt|libfuse}} and its many ports provide a portable high-level interface that may be implemented on a system without a "FUSE" facility.