Microsoft to Charge for FAT File System

pario writes "According to Microsoft, the Redmond company is going to charge a license fee for any product that is formatted in FAT by the manufacturer. Any manufacturer of compact flash memory cards or digital cameras may end up paying Microsoft as much as $250,000 for the use of the file format. The FAT File System is covered by several US patents."

Comments

Well...

[hookedup]

How many of us use a fat partition on their home computers? Since the drives cant be larger than 7.8GB, how many people does this really affect?

No, it is *good* for a monopoly.

[Kjella]

Limiting the ability of others to write FAT-compatible software would be a bad strategic move on MS's part - anyone who currently has another OS interoperating with Windows via FAT may be just as likely to ditch Windows as they are the "other" OS.

Part of being a monopoly is that your market share is so great that everything "must" interoperate with them. On the whole, if you forced people to choose between either Windows or Linux (No VMware/Wine/NFTS/FAT support, because they all use patented MS algorithms/trusted computing to encrypt all), a lot more would be forced to stay on Windows than they'd lose to Linux. And the lock-in would be pretty damn near permanent. Microsoft would just love it.

Kjella

Re: the future?

[Pieroxy]

If anything, Stallman's probably right: we should avoid all propietary software for exactly these underhanded reasons.

Well, I'd rather say we should avoid all propietary software that we didn't ask the permission for using or legally purchased

How does that sound?

This thing amazes me. All these people making devices using FAT are irresponsibly implementing a proprietary feature. Did they dare ask for a license or a permission? I don't think so, or this whole issue would be moot.

So in other words, people are using a proprietaty and patented file system (knowingly, it's not like the patent or owner did hide himself), then the patent owner wants payment, and you will say that the patent owner is evil? Man!

You gain revenue on what you can sell. Welcome to capitalism!

the value of FAT is artificial, and only valuable now *because* all were once free to use it

Man, you really need to get over this issue. It has NEVER BEEN free! This has always been a patented filesystem damnit! Why are people so blind to such a simple issue: You use something illegally (read: without permission from the patent owner) and you get caught! Big freaking deal! I say Go Microsoft on this one!