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Microsoft charges for FAT usage
Posted: 2003-12-04 09:42am
by phongn
The most widely used filesystem on the planet, FAT (and descendants thereof) now has a licensing fee. If a manufacturer formats a flash device it as FAT, they'll have to pay up.
Link.
Posted: 2003-12-04 02:44pm
by Crayz9000
Now watch as EXT2 comes back into the spotlight
Posted: 2003-12-04 05:11pm
by phongn
Alas, FAT/FAT32 is the most widely supported file system, thus it's convenient for flash memory.
Posted: 2003-12-04 07:30pm
by MKSheppard
What the fuck? Someone countersue M$!
Posted: 2003-12-04 07:34pm
by Shinova
What's a flash device? Is a Zip drive one?
Posted: 2003-12-04 09:29pm
by phongn
Shinova wrote:What's a flash device? Is a Zip drive one?
Like one of those keychain USB drives, or the removable media for most digital cameras or whatnot.
Posted: 2003-12-05 01:26am
by Slartibartfast
Sounds like they could charge the makers of Linux's "fdisk" or "disk manager" or whatever it's called for formatting a partition using FAT... weird
Posted: 2003-12-05 01:36am
by phongn
Hrm. Some new things I've been hearing is that this license is for official documentation, code and support and only applies to FAT32 (as opposed to FAT16). Reverse-engineering FAT apparently is fine.
Posted: 2003-12-05 01:51am
by Drooling Iguana
Wouldn't any patents on the FAT filesystem have expired long ago?
Posted: 2003-12-05 01:53am
by phongn
Drooling Iguana wrote:Wouldn't any patents on the FAT filesystem have expired long ago?
IIRC, it was filed in 1995 (probably for some change or addition to the original - FAT has changed quite a few times).