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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."
Gotta love submarine patents.
Is there a win32 ext2/3 filesystem driver out there anywhere?
What if you just sell the cards and usb sticks unformatted and have it formatted under windows? That way you could evade this kind extortion?
The end of FAT as a file system..
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
Hm...since Apple's Disk Utility will let you format pretty much any writable media in FAT, will Apple have to pay Microsoft for that privilege? Will they choose to do so, or will they drop the ability?
Note to manufacturers: this will make your Mac formatted media actually cheaper to produce, so even if you don't give the consumer a discount, that's just one more reason to continue to produce Mac-compatible product...
--
$tar -xvf
All four listed patents deal with the problem of having both short and long file names. None of my digital cameras use long file names.
I must be missing something here....
How can they enforce this, if memory cards/sticks for cameras have been doing this for years now? If they haven't be pursuing the patents enfringement before this, can they now?
What about pre-formatted floppies?
I thought Digital Research was the company that had developed the FAT system?
Is it unreasonable to think that the logical next step is for MS to demand payments from any and all developers of software written to run on the Windows platform? Can a Windows application run without needing to access or use any patented Windows code?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
The earliest versions of the FAT file systems were around in 1981. (Actually probably 1979 or 1980 if you count Seattle Computer's QDOS). Those patents must've expired by now, right? Or does Microsoft get a perpetual patents the same way Disney gets perpetual copyrights?
Does this mean the Linux kernel will be dropping FAT support? And BSD for that matter?
http://ext2.yeah.net
Can they enforce their patents in Europe ? What will be the consequence for Euro-based device manufacturers ?
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Eric S. Raymond predicted that Microsoft would force the patent issue on its file formats in The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
This is very worrying. Let's hope MS didn't get this idea from there.
While I support ESR, I can't help but wonder if outlining Linux's strengths provides M$ with a plan of attack on Linux.
Today, the FAT File system has become the ubiquitous format used for interchange of media between computers.
...
...
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.
If you are interested in obtaining a license, please contact...
(my emphasis added)
You know, they don't have any of the usual SCO-style 'people are using our property without paying us' gripe. I think they're just selling the right to use their specification, not insisting that everybody pays up or get sued.
Well not yet anyway...
foo mane padme hum
I wonder what this means for Linux/BSD FAT drivers. Microsoft's current licensing scheme seems to apply only to companies that sell pre-formatted storage devices/media with FAT, but surely this has implications for free software.
And if they can stop a manufacturer from delivering a product such as a USB drive pre-formatted with FAT, then can't they do the same with a pre-formatted floppy disk? For that matter, can't they do the same with a floppy disk that contains software? Anyone who sells PC software on floppies will owe Microsoft money! (There are less today than there were just five years ago, thanks to CD's, but there are still many small businesses out there. I just got a driver on a floppy last week with something I bought).
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This one isn't really submarine --- They created FAT in 1976, according to the microsoft.com page ... but the earliest patent was filed in 1995.
That can't possibly be right. In the US (but nowhere else) you have a 1 year's grace period from the time of publishing an invention such that you are still allowed to patent it. Even with the USPTO's track record (!!) I honestly can't see them granting a patent based just on 1976 technology. MS must have included new ideas... or something like that.
Because it's harder and harder to innovate with respect to hardware, and provide backward compatibility with your existing client base.
.
What's more, each new 'major' release of (Windows at least) doesn't really provide much in the way of 'must-have' capabilities for enterprise customers, who are the bread & butter for companies like microsoft. Adoption of software upgrades since Win2000 have been slow in the market, because . .
Computers and gear tend to work 'well-enough' for most business uses - so sales of new gear has stagnated for several years (though there are signs of a turnaround).
And Free offerings are becoming more and more viable alternatives for forward-thinking organizations.
So Microsoft is really in a bind here - declining sales, difficulty in setting the technological standards that used to grant them monopoly pricing power, and increasingly viable alternatives for customers leave them forced to consider revenue streams such as licensing technology. And to try like hell (witness their latest DRM efforts and attempts to make it a standard that would guarantee them sales and licensing revenues) to use whatever vestiges of their monopoly power to twist a few more years of control out of their franchise.
The four patents cited all relate to Microsoft's kludge for shoehorning long file names into a filesystem that can only take 8+3 names. You know, Microsoft -> Micros~1.
First I'm going to get obligatory whinges out of the way. It's ludicrous that this is patentable. The patent is stupidly long and verbose, probably to make this 'innovation' seem more significant than it actually is. The patent is also worded to sound as though this is a useful general idea, rather than something that you'll only ever see in FAT because everyone else is sane enough to just use a better filesystem.
On a more practical note, these patents cover only the long name -> 8.3 stuff. Those digital cameras that write 8.3 names (DSC00001.JPG, DSC00002.JPG, ...) should be fine. Shipping blank but FAT-formatted media should also fall clear of the patent's grasp - the patents don't cover the FAT filesystem itself, just the 'VFAT' Win9x method of fitting long filenames into FAT. Furthermore, the patents seem to cover algorithms for inserting long filenames into the directory tables - implementations that don't write, but only read data, might be okay.
Simple blank FAT, might I add, has been around for at least 17 years, so any patents on it should have expired by now.
Ob-disclaimer: I've only skimmed the patents, and I'm not a lawyer. I'm probably wrong.
OK, so we format it in ISO 9660 and the drivers are written to treat it like a CD-RW. Microsoft just makes companies move to standards. (Or they ship it unformatted, and the users choose how to format it according to their OS of choice.) Put the driver on the device (small ISO 9660 file system) set to auto install, and you're set.
Talk about submarine patents. Floppies have been shipping FAT for *decades*!
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
It's like charging users of MS Word a license fee per document.
You're jumping too far ahead. They don't plan on doing that until Q3 2006.
The Tools Of Ignorance wanna be a tool?
Does this apply if you develop your own FAT-formatting software?
Or does it just apply if you sell media that is formatted with FAT?
I'm guessing here, but I expect that if you sell your media unformatted, you'll be OK of course, but what MS is trying to do is prevent anyone from selling MEDIA that is FAT-formatted, but they can't stop you from using something like let's say FreeDOS or Linux to format the media once you've bought it?
Is that right?
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Not so. It may present an interface that behaves like FAT, but that doesn't mean that the actual filesystem used internally is FAT.
Interface vs. Implementation.
Of course, if there's a FAT interface, then MS could arguably claim patent infringement, but I thought that there was a clause in patent law now that said that inter-working with a published standard was non-infringing. (Reverse engineering to inter-work with a non-published standard is different, of course.)
YAW.
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
The four patents listed appear to be to do with VFAT, and specifially the way it simultaneously has a short (8.3) and a long name for each file.
The earliest patent was granted in 1996 - what then of the Rock Ridge CD format which offers a somewhat similar mechanism for long Unix filenames over the standard short ISO9660 length, and was adopted in 1994?
Sure, you could have it use another FS (ext2) but can you imagine a DOS not using FAT?
here's the fist of the patentes in question. Filed for only in 1995, granted in 1996. I've looked at it, but I don't have a good understanding of how claims in a patent work. If each claim represents something they own then I don't see any way they can makes claims as broad as claim 1. If the patent is only for something that matches each and every claim, then it would seem that a very minor (even compatable) varient on one part of any these claims would allow an alternate file system to co-exist that would not infringe the m$ patents. But then it doesn't make much sense for this (or any) patent to go into extreme detail in making claims that would limit what the patent applies to.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Disclaimer: I've worked with the FAT12, FAT16 filesystems in assembly language.
FAT is relatively well documented. IIRC, one can already format a FAT filesystem from Linux, and even if they can't, writing the drivers wouldn't take long.
But why would you use FAT in the first place? It's a very inefficient filesystem, built for ancient hardware.
Since static memory sticks have no problems with random access, it doesn't make sense to use traditional filesystems which were designed to minimize seek latency involving mechanical components. In fact, due to the block access factor, most filesystems are very inefficient when it comes to data storage.
One would think that instead of using a filesystem per se, the memory of a memory stick should be managed in a fashion similar to malloc. The difference would be named allocation - a "filename" would be associated with every section of memory allocated.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
There's always: http://sys.xiloo.com/
Which seems a bit improved on the very useful expore2fs.
I want NATIVE file system integration, VFS is NOT DEEP ENOUGH.
http://sys.xiloo.com/
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
GINF is a filessytem structurally similar to FAT and just by coincidence happens to be compatible, but is not FAT. Would some crazy idea like this work to dodge a patent? If you have a clean implementation of the filesystem that differs in specs from another fs are they really the same? I think it would really only be FAT if you use the microsoft driver. If you don't use the MS driver it must not be true FAT. LAME seems to use this idea; everyone knows LAME Aint an MP3 Encoder, it just so happens that by pure coincidence the files it outputs are compatible in an mp3 decoder.
I recall that Novell's Netware 3.x had the ability to use multiple namespaces, and would automatically produce truncated versions from long file names for DOS machines. Used to run a Novell server that had Mac, Unix and DOS/Windows clients.
Do they own enough patents to shut that project down? If they make sure we lose both FAT and SMB, I'm afraid that will do a lot of damage to Linux. Both dual-boot and fileserver Linux will disappear.
I bet they are particularily interested in pushing aside Samba, since that would automatically mean more 2003 licenses.
Stop the brainwash
Dear Sirs:
I'm a computer professional. On rare occasions I still used floppy disks that I have formatted and put business product on. I might distribute two or three a year to business contacts this way. It has come to my attention that Microsoft now wishes to enforce it's patents on the FAT file system and I believe that the floppies that I distribute might fall under this extension of you monopoly power. Therefore I would like to request that you provide me with the proper paperwork and licensing agreements so that I can pay my 25 cents each time I do distribute a FAT formatted floppy with my product on it.
If we can take down web sites, perhaps the Microsoft legal department should receive a few million requests from people who want to be sure they don't cheat bill out of his two bits when they format and distribute a floppy.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Yes, but what if they cloned it BEFORE it was patented?
Supposedly, MS patented FAT in '96, so if someone had cloned it before that, wouldn't that be OK?
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
So are MS enforcing the patent on the crappy FAT16 - some cheek there! - or the improved FAT32?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Whats so wrong with creating a valuable idea and expecting to profit from it.....?
Nothing.
Wrong. I've pointed this out before and its a point of view that seems overlooked in the debate. The constitutional power to grant exclusive rights to creators is purposed to "To promote the progress of science and useful arts". That is the only thing that is important. Now I agree that giving economic incentive is a powerfull force to get people working and certainly a corporation had better expect a better return than whatever the marginal return is from the alternative investments available to it or why do they even exist. However maneuvers like this while legal go beyond objectional as this post lengthely attests that it is and become somehow anti-constitutional if I may introduce such a concept. That is the law is not unconstitutional and I'm sure they complied with the law to get thier patents, but the situation, moreso in other cases but also here, is clearly working against the constitutional clause.
Is there a remedy? I believe so, I'ld like IP to have a value and then that property value be taxed. If someone pays you the value of your property you must give it up or increase the price and pay back taxes. If taxes become too onerous you can release to public domain and stop paying anything. This should be able to port the current system and the taxes collected which should have a low rate can pay for more support for USPTO infrastructure an improvment of which it is generally agreed is required for the information age.
Furthermore, any other drive formatted with NTFS that I wanted to access, like a USB or Firewire hard drive, would be similarly difficult with a Linux machine.
I had a computer at work die recently. The motherboard popped a chips as it turns out. The problem was that it messed up the hard drive (NTFS) in the process. I couldn't get the drive to mount on any other NT machines so I tried running a Linux distro from CD. It mounted the drive without problem and was able to read most of the contents (some of it was still gone but I was able to recover my work from that day at least). So in this case Linux was better at handling NTFS than Win2K was.
Aren't the FAT16 patents about to expire anyway? Gotta be going on 17 years at least... Times gotta be getting short. Anyone have patent number references?
The reason for the reaction is that, rightly or wrongly, the action is perceived as unjust. And the person writing doesn't believe that the government won't take the part of the entity with the deeper pockets. So some alternative is searched for.
This actually looks like a legitimate patent. I seem to remember that the sandwiching of long file names onto DOS was quite a project, at the time. Or at least that a big deal was made of it. (Never mind that the Mac & Unix already had long file name implementations. They didn't need to deal with dual naming conventions.)
As to how valuable this is...well, if you want to work with MSWindows, and you'll need to write your files in DOS 8.3 format, and they'd better be small enough to fit on a DOS partition.
My personal intent is that if they push this I'll just drop vfat from my system, but as I'm not a manufacturer this doesn't directly affect me.
Another alternative would be to use the ext2 file format, and only provide either serial or CDROM formatted outputs. Other choices probably exist. The question is: "Is it cheaper to convert or to pay?" And they answer is likely to be: "It's cheaper to pay." The follow on questions of "What's the license like?" and "Can you trust them to not come back next year for another license payment?" might well tip the balence, however.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
And the future is...
ext2fs
ext3fs
jfs
xfs
reiserfs
etc.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
The Microsoft patents cover only their specific implementation of how to map long file names to short file names. Some of the earlier patents they reference are:
If you looked up Microsoft's patent and wrote code based on it, then you could infringe. If you looked at Winders and tried to do long and short filenames the same way it does, then you could infringe.
Having your MP3 player use FAT and just long file names doesn't infringe, if I'm on the jury.
sigs, as if you care.
Here, Microsoft's patents relate to algorithms for fitting long filenames onto a file system that only supports short filenames.
Innn-teresting...
Do the Rock Ridge extensions for ISO 9660 count as prior art?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Notice M$ is not suing for damages, because they have not been protecting the patent, if any, up to now. They can go after people with deep pockets to get licences though. There is a principle that M$ must mitigate damages. They have not done so and cannot do it retroactively. If they give a manufacturer notice and the manufacturer does not get a licence then M$ can sue. IANAL
This could have repercussions for Linux distros... many of the floppy images use FAT. I hope this patent does not hold up because the BIOS drivers use it. Will we have to surgically remove old BIOS and install a new one to use LINUX? That sounds like restraint of trade to me. It's time to cut M$ loose from the computer industry. We need an open source BIOS and floppy/CD/hard drive file format.
Except, the linked webpage clearly states:
"Microsoft's FAT file system license offers limited rights to issued and pending Microsoft patents on FAT file system technology, as well as rights to implement the Microsoft FAT file system specification."
It appears that Microsoft is selling a liscense to implement their filesystem. However, the liscense is for manufacturers of consumer electronics and removable media. It's unclear, based on my lack of knowledge of this legal area and the ambiguity of this document, whether (e.g.) writers of software targeting non-consumer electronics products (such as personal computers) would need to approach Microsoft for liscensing.
However, the patents all have to do with VFAT long filenames. Thus, it appears that a manufacturer may only have to refuse to deal with anything other than valid 8.3 filenames to avoid the patent liscensing hassle. I don't know how Microsoft could claim to enforce a restriction on implementing anything on FAT that's not patented; I don't believe they can, under US law, but like I said, I have a very incomplete understanding of US law in this respect.
While these formats might work out OK, they certainly aren't optimized for small hard drives the way that fat is. More importantly, perhaps, Windows can't read them without extra drivers, so one could easily argue this is just Microsoft taking advantage of their monopoly status: have an OS that only reads file systems patented by themselves. How convenient.
I believe that to save money, eventually we'll see devices use a patent-free filesystem. If necessary, to read their media on Windows, they will install a filesystem driver into Windows. Assuming that doing so is cheaper than licensing Microsoft's filesystem. Depending on the license cost, it may well turn out that Microsoft is the one who ends up having to support other filesystems for compatibility.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
The Prior Art for the first, third, and forth patents may be found in the Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol standard for UNIX, which was an IEEE draft specification as far back as July 13th, 1993 according to this PDF file. The first patent is definitely covered by this.
Now, the second patent, the very specific one about tracking name changes and automatically generating the short-form name and about storing all this info in a B-tree predates the RRIP by about a year. This is one of the nicer features of the extended FAT filesystem -- the part that automatically downgrades "My Lovely File.doc" into "MYLOVE~1.doc" and provides a fast lookup method for it. This may be the bulletproof patent for them. Though the IEEE group definitely was meeting before 1993, we can't be sure that they had discussed implementation-level details of using RRIP as a rewriteable format where files can be renamed. I couldn't find any discussion of using B-trees in the filesystem in a brief skimming of the RRIP draft.
Also, in rereading the third and fourth patents, I realize that they're talking about your ability to either reference your document by either the long or the short file name at the same time. I can't remember if RRIP allows you to use the ISO 9660 8.3 filenames or not. This too may be solid.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Does anybody know why de Icaza likes to follow what Microsoft is doing? When I first heard of Gnome from one of its devleopers, he described it as a Microsoft COM-like design. When I asked why they would follow Microsofts design philosiphy he had no answer. THEN, de Icaza pulls out the Microsoft dotNet-like thing. And there are patents on that stuff too.
;-)
I just really looks like de Icaza has a "thing" for copying Microsoft's designs. And if THIS current patent issue isn't a sign of things to come, I don't know what is. Novell might get nailed with patent claims against Gnome and it's other recently purchased copies of Microsofts work. They'll still have Suse though.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Interesting, that means Microsoft is out fishing regarding the license for preloading a FAT filesystem on removable media.
Since the removable media isn't the one manipulating the long filenames I think it's a pretty long stretch to find them infringing.
I can understand a license fee on the devices that does the actual readaing/writing of long filenames on FAT formatted media.
But I guess Microsoft will say to flash manufacturers: We have the patent, feel free to prove us wrong. Btw, how much are lawyers billing an hour nowdays? *Evil laughter*
/greger
BZZZT!!! Wrong! yourself.
FAT was written by BillG for Microsoft Disk BASIC for the MITS Altair in 1975-6. SCP's QDOS didn't exist for another 5 years and when rewritten (yes, rewritten) as PC-DOS in 1981 used Gates' FAT file system.
No. The future is the past... ffs. Which is *still* more stable than any linux filesystem I've ever used and, yes, is designed to actually work well with small, slow disks.
This is not a huge money maker for Microsoft, this is a strategic move on a couple of fronts.
1. To all those who say the announcement only covers hardware -- you're all wet. This might mean similar claims may be made against software strategies and not knowing is worse than a claim.
2. Linux attack may only be an added bonus for Microsoft in this measure. They might be preparing to build a case for database driven file storage. The SQL server vision they've been talking about. I'm not debating its workability.
Microsoft likes to control the market rather than compete in it. The licensing issue is a new stick or carrot. When they want to push people off FAT drives they can raise this license price.
3. Linux should take this seriously, where it is affected -- I dont know enough to answer that.
Open source should continue appealing to the government for a right to interroperate according to simple, sustainable rules. The government is responsible for protecting consumer choice and fair market -- Microsoft's history shows it cannot be reasonable in this matter.
The Intellectual Property basis for the available file systems should be catalogued. If there is a clear best choice it should be made known.
Yes, but how hard is it to implement a windows DLL which allows reading ext2 (for example)? At http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs. htm there is such a program. Have whatever program/DLL included with the digital device install program. End of problem and paying M$ royalties. After all, ext2 is fully documented and (to the best of my knowledge) patent free.
And for those who will claim, "But that is an extra step!": Yes, but the drivers only need be installed once, and the ability to save about $250,000 per license term (a year maybe???) will be hard to resist for manufacturers. I've seen manufacturers skimp on things which cost a lot less.
The Microsoft article pointed to by the story claimed that the first version of the FAT file system appeared in 1976. Any 1976 patent has, as you say, expired.
But the FAT design was such a half-assed pile of crap that it became obsolete very quickly, and Microsoft patched it up several times. Presumably, they patented the fixes.
It is difficult to understand how even the notoriously permissive US Patent Office could grant a patent to something as far behind the state of the art as the FAT file system. Its only original features were steps backwards from the state of the art. Not only the Unix filesystem, but several proprietary minicomputer filesystems which have since died, were significantly better than the FAT filesystem.
Patents require disclosure of everything necessary for a skilled person to recreate the invention.
But, NTFS uses several inventions, and some code to tie them all together. Whereas you should be able to determine all the patentable bits, it may be REALLY tough to figure out all the details.
I read the Sorenson video codec patents once, to see how they encode video. It was a nearly useless endeavor.
"Take it with a grain of salt" dates back 2000 years, to what was then a popular superstition: salt is an antidote for poison.
Taking salt with food was a sign of distrusting the one who provided it.
But then again, I like being able to stick my Sony keychaing 128 megabyte into any 2000 or XP computer without installing extra drivers. Sony I'm sure won't have trouble finding $250,000. The problem is open source software and smaller companies
Given that MS can't be expecting to make that much on this (given the scale of MS), this is mostly about control.
Now Microsoft could reasonably require payment for use of long filename support. However, claiming that the FAT filesystem itself is still under patent protection is rather silly, and threatening to charge licensing fees to flash card manufacturers falls just short of fraud.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Hmm. It kind of makes you think, doesn't it.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I don't think so. Programs that use the FAT filesystem have been out there for several coon's ages or the age of a really old coon.
FreeDOS does not distribute in the FAT filesystem, interestingly: the official distribution is a CD-ROM ISO image only. They also don't distribute product or media preformatted with FAT. I don't even think Microsoft is going after programs that can create a FAT filesystem, so FreeDOS can format a hard disk and you're good to go.
However, I wouldn't mind if they did make it ext2. If you're booting with FreeDOS, it doesn't really matter what the filesystem is. Just allow reading of FAT partitions and floppies, and you can copy over all the old DOS software you wanted to run. Might be a few bugs here and there, but I guess when Microsoft wants to play rough, you just get out of the way.
...
Well, well.
Personally, it looks to me like MS is trying to capitalize on these patents now, after many years of not enforcing them.
Are patents like copyright? In copyright law, if you don't enforce your copyright (a.k.a. 'a xerox machine',) you lose the copyright. Something can just 'fall' into the public domain if the copyright holder doesn't actively protect their copyright.
Can patents go into the public domain the same way? MS hasn't truly enforced this patent, ever. Floppy disks, hard drives, MP3 players, flash media, etc, have all come with FAT formatting pre-applied as long as you've been able to buy them. (I know I had 5.25" floppies that came pre-formatted in FAT back in the mid-'80s.) Because they never chose to enforce their patents before, can these patents just be declared void?
To me, this looks like MS trying to force everyone to NTFS, to lock out other OSes. (For example, if my new digital camera uses NTFS on its flash memory, my Mac will have problems with it.) As far as I can tell, MS still isn't licensing NTFS, though. It wouldn't surprise me to see another licensing announcement soon, licensing NTFS either at no cost, or for less than FAT.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Au contre. You can have a patent on that stuff and Microsoft has at least one of them. It's been several years since I read about it. But M$ has a patent on on older version of a Media Player file format.
A shareware software author figured out the format of the sound file and added into his sound file edit/conveter software. M$ found out about it ,and they sent him a C&D letter. He removed support for that patented Media Player format even though he was in the right. He didn't have the money to fight it out in court.
Clean-room procedures can avoid patents if the result in something that creates the same or compatible output without doing the things specified in the patent.
Clean room is still meaningless in that case. If you can figure out a way to do something equivalent without infringing the patent, it makes no difference if you've already read the patent or not.
If you then sell that product and get sued for patent infringement, the court will only be interested in whether or not your version infringes the patent- they don't care if you knew about the patent before you built it. Clean-room procedures will only make your re-invention work slower and more expensive. ("Oops, sorry. That idea violates the patent too! I won't tell you how, though. Just get back in that closet and try again!")
However, this is easily avoided. If you use MS Windows to create an image,
If you paid for that Windows, then you're hardly avoiding a dependency on Microsoft.
Just discovered this link in a comment over at Groklaw. Section 1.e. of this document would seem to indicate that MS has already granted the right to use FAT for hardware and operating systems:
It doesn't seem like they could actually sue anyone for using FAT under this covenant, which is copyrighted 2000.
While Microsoft's patents on something as broken and trivial as FAT are silly, they are presumably valid. The more serious problem here isn't Microsoft, it's other companies that didn't do their homework before choosing a Microsoft "standard". Maybe once it costs them significant amounts of money, they'll start paying more attention. But $250k may not be enough.
And there are a few open alternatives that even Windows understands out of the box: ISO9660 and UDF come to mind (although Windows may not apply them to flash devices by default).
Bill can't put say a Reiser, or ext3, driver in Windoze, due to the GPL
The GPL certainly isn't going to stop him if he wants to do such a thing. Having a single GPLed module wouldn't magically make all of Windows GPL. Even if it would he could just (gasp!) write his own implementation! As long as all the code is origional, there's no reason it would be covered by the GPL.
or published in full by its designer so it can't be patented
Implementation being secret is certainly not a requirement for getting a patent. Quite the contrary, in fact! Full documentation is actually a requirement. Perhaps you're thinking of Trade Secret, which is a different thing entirely.
I would like to see Bill try this one in Europe. FAT has been in use for 20 years, or very close to it.
I'm not sure how this is relevant. Are you implying that FAT hasn't been in use in America for at least as long?
It also seems that anyone who wants to format a FAT drive only need do it in a country whose legislation, or the enforcement thereof, does not recognise the patents. I doubt that Bill would find a sympathetic court in France for example, to say nothing of India or China. If there is a workaround like that, his efforts will be in vain anyway.
They can do that all they want, I suppose, but they won't be able to sell them in America or the EU (which, IIRC, recently enabled software patents similar to the US), so it hardly seems worth the effort.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Because although installing a filesystem driver may be painful on Win98, it's one thousand times worse on solid-state electronics.
I disagree. I write firmware for digital cameras and I'm in the process of switching from SanDisk's old twist on Etc Bin Systems' RTFS to their newer twist on it that supports FAT32. The hardest part of the job is that I've decided to revise how our "imports" system works and shift build configuration from shell variables to makefile variables (for mapping platforms to collections of features).
Actually porting the code is pretty dang easy- a POSIX-like open/close/read/write API at the top adn a bdevsw-like block(s) read/write, device init/info/reset API at the bottom.
The hard part is 1) getting everyone to agree on a patent-unencumbered filesystem (though standards bodies & extensible standards for this already exist: DCF/DPOF/EXIF/PMA/etc.) 2) getting everyone to implement it
If we switch from the Mass Storage USB class to the Still Image Device Class (PTP (picture transfer protocol) over USB) then the media format will only matter when you take the card out of the camera & use a media reader.
Canon is already making this transition which is why you can "share" their cameras with Mac OS X 10.3 & take pictures by USB control.
As the camera ASICS speed up, the desire to remove the media to read out pictures will decrease. Right now, my Dazzele Hi-Speed USB 2.0 card reader kills our cameras, but that obstacle can be overcome.
Of course, just as Microsoft may have assumed, manufacturers could either use FAT and pay up, or sell their media unformatted, in which case the customer needs a M$(-licensed) product to format it to FAT.
However manufacturers will probably want to test an initial write/read cycle, but if (for the sake of quality control) they simply format their media to something else (let's call it FOSFS, the hypothetical Free and Open Source File System
If this has been Microsoft's reasoning, they have neglected to consider another possibility:
On current removable media of 256 megs and up, an entire Linux distribution takes up less than 10% of capacity:
Unless the boot process from USB memory requires more than a rudimentary, non-infringing "allusion to FAT", such media could not just be formatted in an empty FOSFS, but it might rather be sold with preinstalled software such as this (compiled without FAT support of course): Cameras etc. could switch to the new FOSFS immediately, for PCs would not need to support it "out of the box", as the removable media itself would actually "be its own driver" (and media viewer, and provide network connectivity, etc.).
In this case, such "not-so-blank media" should certainly bear the penguin logo as a "seal of quality".
To justify adding a Creative Commons mark next to it, one could even fill the remaining space with some free and open (motion) pictures and/or audio to be played on first use.
Microsoft itself would have to catch up and release Windows support for the FOSFS before everyone sends and serves pictures from some sort of "USB Linux".
If only one major manufacturer of removable memory takes an approach like this, at M$ the employee who came up with that "bright idea" of a FAT license but failed to see this option may have a hard time explaining...
I do take your point, but there's still a market for a filesystem which has enough frills to get stuff done but also has sufficiently low overhead that small media (e.g. flash cards, floppies etc) are used efficiently. FAT has played that de facto role for a while. We could do with an upgrade.
Personally, if I need floppies which don't need to be used them in a non-Linux machine, I tend to use minixfs for precisely this reason. (Yes, that's right, I'm the person who still uses minixfs on a semi-regular basis.) Another option might be QNX's IFS, but I think that's proprietary.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Source Code is BSD-licensed, it does not have the filesystem size limits that FAT does (which flash card manufacturers will be nearing, sooner rather than later) or the file size limits. It has always had support for long filenames. You do NOT need to ever defragment it (much better than even Ext2/3 in that regard). It is incredibly stable, and does not loose data in any cases (unlike Ext2). It is also very high performance (unlike just about any other filesystem).
Just about every modern OS supports it:
FreeBSD
OpenBSD
NetBSD
Linux
Mac OS (v.X and up)
Tru64/Digital Unix
AIX
HP/UX
Solaris/SunOS
And many more I can't think of off the top of my head. So why doesn't one company put a little effort into writing a Windows filesystem driver (Open Source it and they won't even have to maintain it) and then reaping the rewards of finally having a universal filesystem for their storage devices?
If it wasn't for filesystem incompatibilities, removable hard drives would be a major, major threat to optical media like CD/DVD-Recordables.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Sure, these companies could format their data with EXT2 or another file system, but then no MS PC would be able to read it without a propriety program as well. What's the point of that?
That's one of the reasons Linux is so much better than Windows in this area. I can take data from any of a dozen filesystems and copy it around using the same command...cp.
If MS want to enforce this they shold give manufaturers the opportunity to install a patent free filesystem seemlessly into Windows. This would be best done by the Windows Update facility and should be pervasive throughout the system i.e. the format command is updated, and all utilities can display the filesysem as being FAT/NTFS/whatever.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Absolutely not. You know that there are indeed programs that do not use libc, even in Linux? Unix programmers (usually) do not resort to these sort of shenanigans. You are correct in that the KDE/GNOME vfs folks are going in the wrong direction. The things they are doing should be done in a system-wide way, but mp3-ripping code does not belong in the kernel, rather in userspace. Linux has some experimental userspace filesystem stuff, but not BSD/Solaris/etc. which KDE/GNOME also support. The correct solution would be to have this built into the system from the start, like plan9 does it.
NT does it completely wrong in that the documentation for this stuff ("installable filesystems") is only available coughing up $1000 (and very likely signing an NDA). Projects like ext2 for NT are based on a lot of reverse-engineering.
I believe otherwise hard links are useless and can be replaced with soft links, any persistant hard links are just confusing.
I give a short quiz to every person I interview for a position. One is "demonstrate a reasonable use for a hard link." Possible examples:
1. A certain program runs in a chroot environment. The only way to give this program open() access to files outside its the chroot environment is through hard links.
2. You are making a rescue disk or a flash-based router which uses busybox and is extremely limited on disk space and inodes. Hard links do not use inodes but only directory entries.
3. You have a third-party proprietary program that checks if a file is a symlink and you want it to use a symlink.
4. You have a third-party proprietary program and you wish to bypass its locking semantics. For example, VMWare for Linux will lock a virtual disk file and the utility for mounting this virtual disk host-side also attempts to lock the file. I needed to bypass this locking (I knew what I was doing, it's my data) and was able to do it in a couple seconds with a hard link, whereas I would have to hack libc or the kernel to do it without hard links.
I name these four things as these are the things I've done with hard links at some point or another. Some interviewees came up with original and creative responses.
For an example of a number of these ideas used together, read about snapshots with rsync.
You mention atomic renames, but Unix provides atomic rename(2) functionality (NB: (2), not (3)). I'm not sure how renaming with hard links would really very useful because if the system crashes between link() and unlink(), you end up with two links, so this isn't really atomic.
Mac OS/9 "semi-soft links" sound very interesting, but they do need significant changes to Unix file systems.
MacOS "aliases" are basically hard links that work across devices. The alias contains a file number (akin to an inode number) and a volume number. If the original file is moved from one volume to another, the alias fails. No path information is recorded in the alias file, so there is no fall back to symlink behaviour when the original file is moved to a different volume. All the information is recorded in the resource fork and the alias file has an "isalias" bit in the Finder fork.
In MacOS 9, aliases are handled by the Finder and the standard file-open dialog, although there are alias APIs for applications. MacOS 9 was very strange in that programs very rarely opened files themselves, but rather opened files only via user interaction (double-click in Finder, open dialog or drag-and-drop). If you tried to access a file's resources directly without first checking if the file is an alias (and resolving the alias), you might get garbage (accessing the file's data gives you an empty file); obviously, th