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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."
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- E. Debs
Great! So my next digital camera will use ReiserFS!
MICROS~1.WRD SHOULD BE ABLE TO CHARGE WHAT THEY WANT TO. THEY OWN THE COPYRI~1.WRD AND INTELL~1.WRD PROPER~1.WRD TO THE FAT FILE SYSTEM. HOW DO STORIES LIKE THIS GET IN SLASHD~1.WRD ANYWAY? LEAVE MICROS~2.WRD ALONE.
Today, the FAT File system has become the ubiquitous format used for interchange of media between computers, and, since the advent of inexpensive, removable flash memory, also between digital devices.
Microsoft must have allowed companies to use FAT for some reason. They wouldn't want to create a monopoly would they?
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
I want a quarter everytime somebody says the word "FAT".
One of you nice folks show me to the "everyone's using it now, so I'll screw them" dept please. It's been long enough that I've been getting taken advantage of. Those leeching bastards.
I wasn't trying to be funny, I was serious. It is however funny that you thought, that I thought, that it was funny....
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
That's why people apply for patents....to get those fat license fees!
(ducks)
yeah they added "over the internet" somewhere.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Right. Because they're massively in debt, and no one usese their products anymore.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
"Do you suppose that's why God lives in the Heavens? Because he lives in fear of His creations?" - Steve Buscemi
They are going to absolutely go bonkers when this hits the news.
If it's on Slashdot now, it probably hit the news two weeks ago.
It'll probably hit the news again in a couple days when CmdrTaco posts it again.
So yeah, the companies are gonna go bonkers a LOT. But what do you expect from a sponsor of SCO?
With the whole Master & Slave controversy going on, it should not be long before the FAT system get banned. Or at least renamed "No really your butt does not look big in those pants file system"
That's easy. Red Hat will not include the precomiled module in their binary kernel packages, but 40 new sites will pop up with incompatible RPMs of the module for various kernels. Debian will probably move it to a separate set of packages in non-free or non-US. Mandrake and Suse will do fuck-all, since they're in Europe. Gentoo users will say 'what's a binary package?' and continue compiling it into their kernels. Slackware users will say 'tgz kicks ass, dependencies are teh sux0r.'
;)
Insightful? How about retarded? How else can you write a post directly contrary to all evidence?
A product using ext3 wouldn't have to be open sourced, any more than a product running on Linux. Any changes made to the filesystem would, but it's highly unlikely that you're going to have so grand an idea for a filesystem that your product hinges on it, and then have to implement it on top of someone else's filesystem.
Besides, using GPLed components basically prevents patent issues. By intentionally releasing something that requires you to agree that it is patent encumbered you pretty much give implicit free licenses to any patents that you may have on that code. Otherwise you didn't honor the contract you entered into with the original author of the software.
What would you prefer? Having to open source some tiny filesystem component you added to ext3, or having to pay Microsoft up to $250,000?