Slashdot Mirror
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."
Failure to litigate...
heh...
no seriously, FAT was convenient and fairly standard.. all microsoft is going to do is drive manufacturers to other (hopefully free software) schemes.... That's when we all win! THANKS MICROSOFT!
Whats going on here, they cant want more money, are they just trying to kill FAT and push NTFS or what?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
If they charge people, then they have to support it.
I'll bring them my broken SD-card directories so that they fix their bugs.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
How is Microsoft going to know what format the device is in without breaking the DMCA?
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
The point why I think such a scheme is totally fucked and dishonest is not the fact that such patents exist, but because of the following business model:
1. Create valuable idea
2. Wait until it's a defacto standard 3. PROFIT !!! (no ??? required)It looks more and more like RMS is a true visionary.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
This will probably make MS a little money, until the embedded industry moves en masse to a free file format. If they do, the file formats for PDA's et al move away from MS's (FAT) standard - something that mas long-term repercussions for MS.
The profit margin isn't that great on PDA's et al as it is - why would the industry want to cede a further chunk of that margin to MS? All you'd have to do is include a driver for a free file format with the PDA cradle, card reader, and/or desktop application.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
All manufacturers will grumble (some louder than others), pay up the money and then add an additional $5-$10 on their products to compensate for this licence.
I'm wondering though, if they supplied the products unformatted, would that still mean they have to pay the licence? Upon insertion, Windows would helpfully offer to format the drive for you and then you'd be ready to go.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Thickheadedness helps the process of moving away entrenched companies. And this case is no different. MS is still very much entrenched, no doubt about that. But hardware manufacturers are now that much more likely to support other standards and filesystems (like ext3) natively, and perhaps as their primary system.
They'll get away with this because they're big enough. And they'll make some money. But this, and similar practices, will work against them in the long run.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
The first FAT file system was developed by Microsoft in 1976. That system was based on the BASIC programming language and allowed programs and data to be stored on a floppy disk. Since that time, the FAT file system has been improved upon multiple times to take advantage of advances in computer technology, and to further refine and enrich the FAT file system itself.
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. The FAT file system is now supported by a wide variety of operating systems running on all sizes of computers, from servers to personal digital assistants. In addition, many digital devices such as still and video cameras, audio recorders, video game systems, scanners, and printers make use of FAT file system technology.
Microsoft is offering to license its FAT file system specification and associated intellectual property. With this license, other companies have the opportunity to standardize the FAT file system implementation in their products, and to improve file system compatibility across a range of computing and consumer electronics devices.
Nice guys. Create a standard, realize its being used for a lot of devices after 27 years, see the chance for even more money you don't need, and then charge for it.
It's not worth 250k for a license. We had to use it in devices to remain compatible with an OS that was forced upon us.
Give me a break.
They have several patents. They are charging for their intellectual property. If your beef is fundamentally with the patent system, that's fine, but don't take it out on Microsoft. They are a company which has a legal obligation to their shareholders, and they are doing something well within the law to achieve that.
Remember that this isn't someone just trying to cash in specifically on FAT, this is one part of a program to expand their licensing available. Many companies are probably quite happy about this - shifting from usage of FAT being shakey legal ground to solid legal ground & a known factor.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
It's not like Microsoft even invented the format...
If you developed a technology that's used around the world and is a near-ubiquitous format, wouldn't you license it?
MS would be insane not to charge royalties. The FAT filesystem, unlike many technology patents, is a "real" piece of intellectual property, just like compuserve's GIF file format and the LZW compression algorithm.
Of *course* they're going to license it! As a MSFT shareholder, I'd be rather upset if they DIDN'T license it!
Everyone here is so quick to bash MS... even when they make a good business decision.
I doubt it. Devices can be just as easily used in other OSs with other filesystems.
And the "buy it blank and format it yourself" theory only works for things like USB drives. It's not as easy to format other devices -- like a PDA or any other device that has to come with some amount of software already installed.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
I do not believe this is a big surprise move by MS. They are, after all, the devil :-)
But seriously, I have wondered for a long time how long RedHat and other companies would get away wiht providing tools that help people transition to Linux. Such as the tools that mount ntfs or fat filesystems. Microsoft knows nothing of the spirit of cooperation as proven by the way they treat their business "partners." Instead of working together to achieve something great as in a partnership, Microsoft waits til they think its profittable and normally competes head to head with their partners by buying out one of their competitors.
Now, in the same fashon, they will charge for something that was free. Compnaies are hooked into using the FAT filesystem. And, like a drug dealer, they start charging for the drugs that keeps the user flying high now that they are hooked by the first freebies.
Intelligent companies will figure a way to not be exploited by MS. Of course, if they were intelligent, they should have seen this coming from MS.
Thanks to royalties on the .GIF format after years of being royalty free, the .JPEG REALLY, and I mean REALLY took off, plus PNG came about as well. Lots of programs dropped .GIf support completely and I didn't blame them. Maybe this will make another standard take precedence on new camera's and flash devices, $250k is a HUGE price to pay for a little startup trying to push a new product
Presumably so - they are using the FAT technology, and hence would need to license the IP. It's not that bad, actually - if you follow the link, you'll see that the license fee is only $0.25 per unit, up to a max of $250,000 per licensee. Rather than a lucrative money grab, this looks like they're establishing a precedent for other licensing opportunities, such as (perhaps) 3rd party hardware/software that uses Microsoft file formats.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Is there a win32 ext2/3 filesystem driver out there anywhere?
Forget that -- there is FAT code in the Linux kernel. More IP that smacks Linux and means that it cannot be distributed (and interoperate with windows, as FAT-based systems were the only major filesystem that both Linux and Windows can read and write out-of-box. Very bad juju.
FWIW, it is *damned* hard to write Windows filesystem drivers -- compare a small Linux filesystem -- RAMFS, at 342 lines of source -- with even a minimal Windows driver. There is an ext2 implementation with read support, though.
Oh, yes. The embedded community uses FAT all over the place. They are going to absolutely go bonkers when this hits the news.
May we never see th
Hey, if they can't compete on quality and features, why not force their way into the market using patents.
If you're not using Windows then why are you using FAT? Even if you are using Windows why are you using FAT?
It seems to me that Microsoft is granting licenses for their FAT code and what-not. They make no mention of not being able to make your own FAT-system (which what everyone has been doing up 'till now).
The only reason you'd really care about this is if you run a large company that makes FAT devices and want to insure that your FAT-system is 100% compatible with specs (which are controlled by Microsoft). Otherwise, you wouldn't care... You'd just look up the well published info already available for free on the 'net.
/dev/random
That brings forward an interesting detail: filesystems for flash-memory devices should be optimized to avoid writing often to the same memory area (the FAT for example) because the memory position may fail after a few thousand writes to the same position, or is this taken care at the memory controller level and the filesystem need not to care?
...
It may be the case that one FS is more or less adequate for flash devices given this restriction holds true
Regardless of the eventual European stance on software patents, manufacturers would still be hit by the patent when marketing in US or Japan.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Anybody has the right to file a patent and attempt to license its technology (as long as the patent makes sense, which is not always the case with software patents, but that's another story).
The right way to do it: get the patent, announce the technology and licensing terms for it, sell licenses to however's interested. This way, manufacturers can decide whether they want to invest into that particular technology or find an alternative.
The wrong way to do it: get the patent, wait for a large number of manufacturers to widely use the technology, then announce licensing terms. This way, manufacturers have already invested a lot of resources into the tech and have no choice but to pay for the license, because switching to an alternative would cost them even more.
In an ideal world, the wrong way should be illegal and carry criminal sentences for extortion.
That's a limitation of the camera, not the filesystem. All my CF cards are formatted FAT32 and can support long filenames. As removable media gets bigger FAT32 or something like it is gonna be required for volumes bigger than 2gb anyway.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
It's not an issue that a clean-room implementation would fix. The patent in question isn't on the code, but rather on the file format. Remember all the shit that Compuserve put people through over the GIF file format? This would be similar. Microsoft is saying "Hey! We should be making money off that!". I don't know what this means for FreeDOS, PC-DOS, syslinux-based boot disks etc, but it can't be good...
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
It's dishonest and unacceptable for them to attempt
to start charging after so many years, for something
noone has ever charged for before, after it has
become something which has become a de facto standard,
often implemented in hardware. Like GIFs were, their
patent should be ignored, and more ideally, legally
shot down.
Was FAT really innovative anyway? The patents just
cover modern issues probably not even implemented
on 95% of the FAT-handling devices (e.g. my
digital camera). From what I remember of CP/M's
filesystem, FAT didn't seem to be markedly
different.
On another node, as IBM and Microsoft had
cross-licensing for most of their early
DOS-related stuff (remember PC-DOS?), should
their claim not be invalidated, could they simply
grant the world an open license for it?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
This is certainly not true. With copyright law, it's illegal to copy code. With patent law, ideas are patented. Wheter it's implemented in a 'clean room' or not, that really doesn't matter.
THAT's the reason why we detest software patents in the first place!
To be able to bring out preformatted FAT flash devices without paying the Microsoft license, one would have to claim rights to 'prior art'.
In contrary with copyright law, however, it's the responsability of the IP holder to come down on the infridger (so as long as you don't get a letter from MS, you aren't obligated to take action).
Yet IANAL but in my past businesses talked about these issues alot with lawyers.
Regarding the question wrt European manufacturers usage of the FAT filesystem. First needs to be seen if these patents are also valid in Europe or not. After initial issuing a patent in Europe, US or Japan it's automatically valid for 3 years in all of these regions. After this period it needs to be registered in the specific region. As I presume these are quiet old patents, one should look into this.
However, there still is controversy regarding software patents and its enforcebility in Europe. European software patents should also have a hardware part. This license has a hardware part, but the patents themselves not. ;-)
You might want to consult a patent lawyer to verify this, but I would bet that it's unenforceable in Europe. However, I wouldn't bet on this for 250k USD
A lot of smaller device vendors will probably sell the unformatted version after they receive letters from MS (which is a pity as FAT is readable/writable by Win/Mac/Linux).
A lot of users will now unknowingly format their cards using NTFS making it harder to exchange data with non-Windows users...
Regarding the FAT driver in Linux; as this MS license only speaks of preformatting digital media in the FAT filesystem, this is not an issue today.
Could Microsoft ask money for inclusion of the FAT driver in the Linux kernel?
Remember, patents are about ideas, not about the actual implementation or even in which language certain algoritms are written (it's about what is accomplished, not about how it's actually done). So as the FAT filesystem is patented technology, they could theoretically take action.
However, the action needs to be taken by them first. If 'prior art' can prove that the Linux implementation is based upon technology very simular than the patents issued, a case in court might prove the patents to be not really valid.
Such a thing would also destroy all possible revenues from licensing programs such as these (it's higly unlikely that device manufacturers will try to prove they had access to prior art, the long-bearded fs developers in the OpenSource community are probably less easy to convince - especially since the patents where only filed in 1995).
If the outcome of a legal case would be different, chances are higher that distributions would just drop the filesystem driver instead of paying money to Microsoft.
So, to me it seems that Microsoft would have more to loose than to gain from going after the FAT driver in Linux.
copyright.
These patents, as has been mentioned before, cover only long file names.
Based on my cursory reading of the patents:
A device that merely formats a storage device so it can be used by an infringing writing device would not by itself infringe these patents.
Similarly, if a camera (for instance) does not contain logic capable of writing long file names it would also not infringe these patents.
Microsoft probably set the maximum at $250,000 because it would cost more than that for a company to litigate the issue.
if you follow the link, you'll see that the license fee is only $0.25 per unit, up to a max of $250,000 per licensee
I've been party to meetings and technical design exercises where we struggled to remove mere pennies from the build price of a product, and were elated when we managed to do so. 25 cents is a huge cost delta for the build price of a piece of hardware.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Bdoh! JFS is open source... Available at your closest ftp.xx.kernel.org mirror in recent linux-kernels, and possibly in *BSD too (at least I've got a vague recollection of someone doing a port). And to preempt a possible question, yes, it's IBM's own code, not reverse engineering.
Static, EEPROM (flash) and all other memory chips allready have a built-in filesystem. RAM means random access and voltages on the pins select the exact points on the chip. FAT is used because just about every OS supports it and cheap card readers can be made.
Using no filesystem will get the best usage of the memory chips. Please note that a 1440k floppy won't give you that but perhaps 10% less. As usual M$ shoots itself in the foot and camera makers can advertise 10% more pictures to a card. Tar would work nicely as a 'filesystem' and as far as I know that is free and even Windows understands it. Tar is very efficient but not exactly 'random access' something not usually needed in a camera.
No filesystem or minimal formatting works well on all removable media. That includes DVDs and CDs which will hold considerably more if you don't use cd9660 or UDF. If you have Unix (and SCSI) try it if media is intended to be streamed. Any further discussion of this is offtopic.
Using a standard random access file system does make sense when you consider that the file system needs to be mounted on a computer. By using FAT they avoided having to spend money writing drivers for the various versions of Windows, MacOS etc.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
An operating system provides a common name space for both long filenames and short filenames. In this common namespace, a long filename and a short filename are provided for each file.
... I was using Pathworks PCNFS long before then, and it was mangling long filenames to the familiar format we attribute to MICROS~1 today.
That would mean VFAT, which is a layer on top of FAT. Plain FAT didn't have long filenames, period.
Plus, if they filed that patent in 1995
Personally I think MS is simply trying to quicken the demise of FAT so they can drop it quicker. About time, too -- there's simply no need for it anymore.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Let me remind you, this is the kind of B.S. that can happen when you rely on proprietary software (I'm guessing that FreeDOS and friends do rely on MS standards in order to maintain compatibility with MS-DOS programs). Someone can pull the rug right out from under you whenever they want to.
So MS is going to nickle and dime people to death. Who would have guessed...
FAT is much older than 1981. FAT (File Allocation Table) file system was originally written by Bill Gates for Microsoft's Disk BASIC for the Altair back in 1975.
CP/M used a totally different file system. QDOS is also much later than FAT.
The patents being discussed are not for FAT itself but for the additions to FAT that were done for Windows 95.
The patents aren't for FAT, they're for enhancements to FAT (like Long File Name support) that were added in the 1990s.
The original 12-bit FAT format patents are probably expired by now but IANAL.
Microsoft's licensing agreement lists 4 patents that it covers. All were filed since 1992, and all were granted within the last 8 years or so.
However... if you look at the materials patented, all refer to long file name support. ("Method and system for accessing a file using file names having different file name formats," "Common name space for long and short file names," etc.) If one develops a device that utilizes FAT without using long file names, I'd imagine that they'd be safe.
Yep, if killing the FAT file system isn't the objective, it will be the result. It's probably aimed at preventing Linux interoperability with Windows machines. I don't know how that will play out, in court or otherwise, but if MS has patents on FAT, then presumably they may want, or be able, to prevent people from distributing free code to access FAT files systems.
Certainly, any company using FAT for its products will switch to a different file system. SCO may want to sue MS for infringing on its patented "Cock Pistol, Shoot Foot" algorithm.
Overall, I kind of think it might be a good thing that MS is doing this. It provides yet another reason for tech companies to consider embedded Linux for their devices. And the more prevalent Linux becomes in that sector, a) the sooner Linux driver support will improve, and b) the more home users will consider Linux.
"Personally I think MS is simply trying to quicken the demise of FAT so they can drop it quicker. About time, too -- there's simply no need for it anymore."
I respectfully disagree. OSX, OS9, Linux, BSD, and almost any other OS that you can think of can read and write FAT. Any device that is to be cross-platform compatible with read/write works very well with FAT. The only other filesystem that I know of that these all read and write is ISO9660, which last time I checked didn't include long filename support without Microsoft Joliet extensions or some other after-spec hack anyway.
Microsoft isn't going to support a filesystem that makes it easier to use devices on a competitor's platform, plain and simple. OS implementers have had to reverse engineer Microsoft's ways of doing things for a long time, and if Microsoft is allowed to litigate FAT out of use, they'll use it to try to force everyone else out.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It is standard procedure in threat analysis to analyze based on what someone CAN do, not what he has done so far.
If the patents are valid, then VFAT support needs to be removed from the kernel and distributions UNLESS there is some good reason why this threat cannot be applied to Linux. One possible good reason would be that the submitter was a company that was in a patent pool with MS.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You say, NTFS not fully documented. But then you say patents?
(I'm not disputing your assertions, btw.)
Now correct me if wrong, but isn't a requirement to get a patent that you disclose EVERYTHING necessary so that a person "skilled in the art" can recreate the patented work? If such a patent exists, then wouldn't (shouldn't?) it have everything necessary to make a Linux NTFS driver work?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Not optimized for small drives. Okay, then for small media, maybe we should look elsewhere. What format did CP/M use?
Another point is: please define "small" media. When FAT was invented and optimized for small media, the definition of "small" was 360K floppy disks. FAT was unsuitable for a Big Hard Di_k of 2 GB or more. So is a 256 MB flash card really "small" media? Isn't, say ext3 suitable for such a "small" media? It seems to me like that that long ago people talked up how you could install Linux on older systems with tiny hard disks that are smaller than some flash memory cards.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
When you look at the bigger picture, it sure doesn't look like there's any growth left in the company. For me, the telling signs were:
1) first put up when Microsoft started mentioning the word "Linux". They don't do that normally since it validates the product.
2) when they started mentioning it in their financial statements.
3) when LAMP took away most of the MS Windows server growth.
4) more and more mentioning of the word "Linux" by Bill and Steve.
5) recently when Prudentials financial analysts start asking about Microsoft Windows growth prospects against Linux and Linux desktop growth.
6) Microsoft trying to pedal it's patents for $$$.
It may not be visible as a death spiral but it sure looks like there is a massive amount of "concern" in Redmond. And with all of their profits in the OS and office applications, they have nothing but cash to help them get out of this. Even giving away their software will not KILL Linux. It would only slow it down momentarily and they know this. IMHO.
There is concern in Redmond. You can be sure of that. Is the Coriolis Effect in action here? There's probably some movement already and there is no sign of an opposing force. Surely, not this patent claim.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Responsding to myself, but this just occurred to me: I wonder how this will affect the FreeDOS project. My first guess would be that they'll have to rewrite the project to use ext2 or some other file system.
Software patents have been commonly regarded as the "nukes" of the software world. I'm beginning to think that MS has decided it has nothing to lose by going nuclear on the free software world.
According to the inventor and according to the ancient Byte article, what FAT was designed for was to allow the entire allocation table for a floppy to be RAM-resident on a pre-1980 personal computer.
The current announcement only applies to media that is sold pre-formatted. The patents, however, can be applied to anything that uses FAT32 or VFAT. Clean room implementations are of no help.
Some have asserted that this only applies to anything that writes (formats?) the file system onto the media, so possibly a version of a driver that couldn't format a volume would be ok.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Educated guess: The patents cover methods and algorithms, not the particulars of NTFS implementation.
So someone "skilled in the art" could create a filesystem using the techniques in NTFS described by the MS patents, but this wouldn't necessarily be compatible with NTFS.
The enemies of Democracy are
Mac's HFS and HFS+ are another alternative. There's PC (pay) software to read them already in at least 3 flavors, and I believe Linux supports them, too. Of course, these may be covered by Apple patents.
Of course, this might explain why it's such a bitch to format to FAT on a OS X Mac....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
So, like the gold rushes, it will be a huge waste of time and money for almost everyone involved?
The *only* nice thing about FAT is that all the Windows machines in the world can read it without installing drivers.
More important is that every electronic gizmo taking flash memory cards (digital cameras and MP3 players) can read/write it without installing drivers!
Because although installing a filesystem driver may be painful on Win98, it's one thousand times worse on solid-state electronics.
It's a chicken and egg thing - the cameras are designed to use FAT because they're made to interface with Windows machines.
MS isn't going after Sony for the cameras they made yesterday, they're gunning for license fees for cameras they are *going* to build.
The cameras don't talk to each other, so it won't matter if the camera I buy next year doesn't speak FAT. Unfortunately, no other filesystem is as well supported on the desktop as FAT.
quite the opposite...you're looking at it the wrong way. patents are put in place to help the little guy succeed amongst big corporations like this. if Linus held the patent on FAT, and decided to exercise his legal rights, would you be so critical then? oh yeah, and our economy is doing great...thanks in part, to a system that allows for such success of the individual.
Colossians 2:8
Your not exactly wrong, but...
Not everything inside NTFS is patented. A patent for a "means to store a filename in an inode" doesn't tell you a whole lot about anything.
Once again, look to abuse by the patent system. Patents and Copyright were supposed to superceed trade secrets. Either Or, was supposed to be a choice you had to make. Now you can use both, thus the entire point of the patent system has been corrupted.
Patents were supposed to cover "inventions", not mear discoveries or things that could be produced by anyone skilled in the art as a matter of need. Thus something like NTFS may be subject to patent, and thus made available to the public at the end of the term. But, again, the system has been corrupted such that one NEVER patents the invention itself, but as many individual acts of routine as possible. Thus, your "invention" remains opaque and your "patents" can cover all sorts of routine.
FAT is a "filesystem" that any not-so-good programmer might throw together if so asked to store files. It is hardly an "invention" under the intent of the patent system.
Imagine the Light bulb. Prior, nothing even remotely like it was in existed. That's an invention. Putting a metal base on it, using blue glass, or shaping it like a christmas tree bulb is not (well, was never supposed to be). Those little improvements are somthing anyone skilled in the art of glassblowing would take for granted.
>So now that you'll either not "have a positive experience or put[s] a
>lot of pressure on [y]our support systems" trying to install a digital
>camera or flash media under Windows, do you think that Microsoft will
>have to drop their desktop distribution?
This fear of "negative experience" will cause the camera vendor to bend over and pay the license fee, because they (rightly) fear their customers are not capable of installing extra drivers.
The computer I'm typing this comment on is a Mac, which dual-boots Mac OS X (native filesystems: HFS+, UFS) and Linux (native filesystems: ext[23], XFS, ReiserFS). Neither OS had stable read/write support for the other's filesystems at the time I installed, but everything can write VFAT, so I allocated a 20GB VFAT (FAT32) filesystem (~/Storage in Linux, /Volumes/STORAGE in MacOS) for bulk file storage that should be shared between OSs.
/home and ~/Storage onto HFS+, if I can work out how to keep UIDs in sync between the two OSs.)
...), although in this case VFAT has the additional advantage that it's the "second-best" filesystem for NT anyway.
(Linux supposedly now has reliable read/write HFS+ support, but I haven't tried it yet; if it is indeed reliable, I might migrate
The same solution would be useful on a dual-boot WinNT/Linux PC (NTFS vs
(In fact, my PC still dual-boots Win98/Linux, so NTFS isn't an option for me anyway - I might consider upgrading to whatever the latest version is when a lot of software starts to require NT, or I might just run Linux and MacOS exclusively.)
That was the intent, and I suspect to some extent it still works that way. But I suspect that there's far more happening of a different sort with patents - and that's the creation of a club. Remember the phrase, "stand on the shoulders of giants?" Well, the shoulders are patented. If you want to stand on those shoulders and reach higher, you have to let the giant reach that high, too.
In essence, patents have created a club, and while you can still get a patent and make money, you probably can't disrupt an existing technology, because you need to license existing technology to make your patent work, and the most likely license term is to cross-license your technology back to the would-be disruptees. They can either take advantage of the technology, or you'll find that the license prevents you from disrupting their business - unless you're excessively lucky.
I recently heard about a guy with some sort of chemical/drug/food (forget which) patent that's running out. NONE of the industry has agreed to license it, they're just waiting for it to expire. In the meantime he's losing all of his development and attempted marketing money. Maybe he was asking absurd terms, maybe he deserved them, but the industry felt we could get along without the new product, the guy couldn't commercialize without more money than he had, so they could afford to wait.
Come to think of it, I've got a friend in the very same situation.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Sadly, that simply isn't true. Trademarks work that way, but patents do not.
Unisys successfully pulled off just such a stunt with LZW compression as used in GIF files.
this is. MS is using their monopoly unfairly, patent protection or no. This should be fought on those grounds and should win. Anyone with big enough pockets to do so?
If memory serves didn't Unisys pull the same trick with GIF. Create a de facto standard, wait until everyone is using it, and then start extor^H^H^H^H^H enforcing the patent. Not only is M$ being evil, they are also being unoriginal.
Patents were put into place to help fund research and design groups. If my company spent $1 million to create some new technology and Joe Schmoe's company uses it for free, what's the point in me spending the money? Why don't I wait for someone else to invent something similar. Why would anyone have an R&D group anymore?
Now I'm in debt and Joe Schmoe Inc. is raking in the money for my idea. Still think patents are a bad idea?
the cameras are designed to use FAT because they're made to interface with Windows machines.
Once, but not any more. Originally cameras used FAT for Windows compatibility (Even though it wasn't really needed back then... at that time, consumers needed new drivers to recognize flashcards, so they could've installed a new filesystem at the same time). But today, cameras need to be compatible not only with Windows desktops, but also other digital cameras, media on store shelves, Kodak photo-kiosks.
MS isn't going after Sony for the cameras they made yesterday, they're gunning for license fees for cameras they are *going* to build.
That's painfully obvious, and changes nothing.
The cameras don't talk to each other, so it won't matter if the camera I buy next year doesn't speak FAT.
Oh really? You've never moved a memcard from one camera to another? You don't enjoy the convenience of tearing an SD Card out of its package and immediately jamming it into your camera, without reformating it first? (Which would erase any data already on the card)
It is precisely because all current digital cameras use FAT that future cameras will need to- otherwise, those future cameras will be at a competitive disadvantage because sticking a memory-card into them doesn't "just work".
From a domineering-industrialist standpoint, Microsoft has played this very well: they allowed FAT support to seem free long enough for all digital cameras to use it, even though initially filesystem didn't matter. Now that the manufacturers are addicted, they can start to bring up the price. A textbook submarine patent.
Well, with one difference. Microsoft (in this case) own and developped the technology they want to license. That should make a different between the two issues, don't you think so?
People have been apparently blinded by Open Source Software, if they thought they could use a proprietary technology freely.
For once, Microsoft is doing what they should do. And still, the slashdot community is bashing them. I guess it is hopeless then.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
That's not an NT file-system driver, it's just a program that can read files and looks like Explorer. A proper driver is an NT IFS (installable file-system) driver, like this one.
No, OSS people have been blinded by Megalosoft's 20+ year failure to enforce rights regarding FAT. It's an old tactic - introduce a feature, wait until it becomes a defacto standard, and *then* demand a pound of flesh.
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
I'd be willing to buy a digital camera that's just a little less convenient in order to take this and rub it in Billy's face.
Admirable. And non-representative of the typical consumer's response.
PS. Slashdot had better not allow editing of posts. That's inimical to a threaded message system. You can't have a coherent discussion if the comment you were replying to can be totally redone, leaving a response floating after it that now seems irrelevant.
If editing is allowed, it should always leave an option to see the earlier version(s)... and if someone responds to the pre-editing version of the post, then that version should be the default one displayed (With a small link going to the new version).
The first thing Slashdot should do to modernize its comment system is to create an official way to quote the preceding message, instead of relying users to manually paste it and insert italic tags.
Let's make a formula defining small. FAT12 was invented in 1980, and 32MB is it's maximum capacity (160K is the minimum capacity). FAT16 was designed in ~1985, and can handle up to 2GB and down to 16MB. FAT32 was designed in ~1994, and can handle a shitload of space (I think 40GB), and down to 512MB. VFAT extensions for all FAT filesystems were engineered along with FAT32. However, all of these are in use. VFAT12 is used by small flash cards and floppy disks. VFAT16 is used by most flash cards. VFAT32 is VERY rare in flash cards.
Anyway, hard drives were 10MB max at the time that FAT12 came out. FAT12 handled 160K as it's minimum, and 180K was considered large. However, we're basing this on the maximum and what was considered the lowest common denominator of storage. 10MB was the highest storage format, and 180K was the LCD of storage formats. 40MB and 720K were the formats around the release of FAT16, and 810MB and 1.44MB were the formats around the release of FAT32.
10240:180::40960:720::829440:1440
Divide the capacity of the HDD @ FAT12 creation by the LCD (FDD). Get 56 1/8. FAT16 is 56 1/8. FAT32 is 576, which represents a slip in FDD capacity. Unfortunately, this factor is meaningless, as floppy drives have stayed the same, but hard drives have advanced leaps and bounds. For the factor to remain the same, floppy drives would have to have been 14580K when FAT32 was released. Ironically, they'd still have been under FAT16's minimum... I'd say "small" is anything that can be multiplied by 56 1/8 to get 40GB (or less), the smallest normal HDD size nowadays.
Aside from the fact that software patents in and of themselves should not be acknowledged as having any validity. Software after all is covered under copyright law, not patent law.
Microsoft has allowed the fat file system to propogate for free until becoming a standard, and now is slamming charges on it's use for everything that should grandfather this. Microsoft has every right to do it (again if you believe software patents are legitimate and therefore give right) but they shouldn't impose this on existing applications of the technology. Rather on whatever comes out of the gate from this day forth.
Besides that, the fat filesystem is only unique in the sense that it never occured to anyone to write a filesystem so blatantly weak and crippled.
I believe the real reason microsoft is doing this is because fat is the only filesystem which can easily be used to exchange data between windows and other operating systems.
Let's go back through the Patents again with that tidbit in mind...
My statement still stands on the 6,286,013 Patent- it's not applicable execpt in the narrowest of terms, i.e. sitting on top of a BIOS/BDOS interrupt driven disk access, x86-32 system. It's just a wee-bit too specific to be something they can ask for royalties on for most things out there. (Even though they've got the brass balls to try all the same...)
The 5,745,902 Patent discusses the process that they use for the LFN->8.3 and 8.3->LFN correlations and keeping it all consistent within the OS. Referring to the Patent text:
One wouldn't get tripped up on this part by simply NOT using a B-tree since they don't allude to any other indexing scheme. They do, unfortunately go on to describe in detail the 8.3 name generation scheme (Otherwise known as name mangling...) and their methodology for avoiding conflicts...
However, based on how the whole scheme works (which isn't covered by this Patent...), it's concievable to come up with a different naming algorithm that would work that didn't touch on their algorithm. If that's possible, then you don't get tripped up on that Patent as it is an explicit statement of how MS does the task- if you can come up with an alternate method that does the same thing (or close enough that Microsoft's code doesn't notice that you're not doing it "right"...), you're in the clear on that part of the Patent. I suspect that this is the case, based on my studies on the VFAT scheme.
Now, the real sticking point is the other two. They discuss handling long and short filenames in a common database. The real question is, is it a common database? If it's not, the Patents, while lovely in and of themselves, would not cover the exact situation or a portion thereof, thereby allowing you to avoid issues with them.
So, one would want to answer that question to determine if things look bad for people wanting to implement VFAT systems (We'll get to possible Prior Art issues in a bit...). In order to do that, one would have to do a rough analysis of VFAT to see how it's done up.
Referring to a developer's notes on VFAT (http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/gchunt/vfat.html), we can see that Microsoft has hacked in a scheme to wedge the LFN into the current directory structure entries, 13 characters of the LFN at a time. Therefore, without prior art involved or
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Even more reason to get ext2/3 drivers ported (and ported well) to Windows.
For once, Microsoft is doing what they should do
I thought they were innovators, making their living from "inventing" and "creating" useful things.
If that's where their money came from, I'd be jealous but happy for them.
This is *not* doing what they should be doing.
Look, FAT has value only because it was freely and widely used. It's not a magical filesystem that no one else could have created. If these restrictions had been there from the beginning, then I would also say things were "fair". But, to give it away so that peope can come to depend on it and then all of a sudden claim that it's "technology" that you have monetary rights for is indeen underhanded.
It may well be all fine and dandy within the scope of the law (maybe that's the only thing you're arguing), but that doesn't make it ethical, nor what a supposed "technology" company that "invents" and "innovates" does for a living. It might be what MS does, but it's nothing more than legislating for dollars.
If anything, Stallman's probably right: we should avoid all propietary software for exactly these underhanded reasons. And maybe people won't be so quick to poo-poo the efforts to create patent-free standards and formats (like ogg, etc.).
My problem is that companies, supposedly, gain revenue from some sort of service or innovation. This doesn't fit either, it's really not much better than extortion (the value of FAT is artificial, and only valuable now *because* all were once free to use it).
Meanwhile from the consumer's point of view, the difference between a $50.00 drive and a $50.50 drive is 1%. If consumers were strongly motivated by 1% price differences, we'd see stores advertising 1% off sales.
Sounds like crap to me. If it can be shown that MS encouraged the use of FAT without demanding payment for years, then I think a good case can be made that FAT is now in the public domain.
Isnt knowingly failing to enforce an IP grounds to lose it. I think its happened in the past.
A lawyer (or like minded) might wanna clear this one up for me.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
The patent covers the specific implementation. The issue as I see it here is that under US patent law it is possible to patent a specific implementation of an interface even though the details patented are both obvious (in both the litteral and legal sense since the USPTO does not is corrupt) and non-essential.
Microsoft is forced to license this patent because it is an arbitrary interface patent. There are any number of design choices that could have been made, there is no intrinsic value in the specific choice made by Microsoft. But the USPTO will happily grant them a patent whose sole purpose is to prevent others interfacing to their system.
There are lots of examples of using the patent system to effect 'tied sales'. The pattern of slots on a razor blade handle is patented to prevent other companies offering competing blades. Lexmark and other printer companies have used the DMCA to create legal grounds to enforce an illegal tied sale.
If you look at what Microsoft is offering here they are at least offering a reasonable value in return in the form of a pretty decent compatibility testing regime. You can easily spend a couple of hundred grand on that type of testing.
Of course it does suck for OSS, but write your own device drivers and you can do whatever you like. You could even have an encrypted file store on a removable medium - somthing Microsoft seem unable to support. For some reason I can't format my compact flash cards with NTFS and enable the crypto.
That is just stupid.
That is the US Patent system, but I am repeating you
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/