What was fileserver=1 setting for?

In an older server, I still have the setting "fileserver=1" in options.conf

I can't directly find what this setting is for. Next to that, in newer installations, this option is not present anymore in options.conf.
What was this setting for and can it be removed without problems?

Another question.
For security reasons an option "secure_htaccess" was added.
Later an option "harden-symlinks-patch " was added too.

As far as I understood, you can choose one of both options, which have the same effect. Am I correct when I'm using the harden-symlinks-patch, that I don't need to activate the secure_htaccess setting anymore?

Or are both settings become obsolete (or deprecated or how do you call it) by an updated apache 2.2 version or something?

Reason I'm asking this, is that I'm trying to get all servers having the same minimal changes in options.conf as needed.

I've already asked the question here:

http://www.directadmin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38654&highlight=fileserver

There you can find John's replies on the subject.

Thank you.
So as far as I understood it's an old setting which can be removed because it's replaced by the downloadserver= setting.
I removed it from options.conf.