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Microsoft FAT Licensing Plan - No Big Deal?
prostoalex writes "InternetNews.com describes the reaction to Microsoft's decision on FAT licensing. It doesn't look like the company is expecting to make any significant money out of licenses (there's also a cap of $250K, so none of the big guys will have to pay millions to Microsoft). It also doesn't look like Linux companies are stressed over this decision. "We are only accessing FAT32 file systems, not using them. This licensing program is of little interest to SuSE", a Novell/SuSE spokesperson said."
We're living in an MS-centric world; Either you're using NTFS or FAT. And FAT, is much easier to implement than NTFS. It also uses less CPU power than NTFS. There have been some comments in the iriver user forums regarding reformatting the device's drive with XFS or ext3. Again, processing power was the main issue with that.
for small devices and portable media like flash cards for its simplicity.
So simple in fact, many companies have rolled their own FAT-alikes that are backwards compatible with it and thus likely avoid licensing fees. M-Soft likely sees it as a opportunity to squeeze the last bits out of the old tech... such as "is your FAT system *really* compliant? Why not just buy ours and we guarantee it is!"
I don't see why this is worthy of a story...pretty common business practice out there.
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I've got to lodge a protest against that moderation also. OK, moderate it to "Offtopic", but certainly not "Flame Bait".
Merry Christmas to all.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
Or why use fat when you have iso-9660?
I was discussing this with my nephew the other day. Basicly because one of the primary reasons that fat was so cool(sic) was the fact that everyone and their neighbor could use it. If you had a mac, amiga, atari-st, or even a word processor, all of them could do fat cause it's what was popular.
Better exists, but FAT was where it's at as far as intraoperability.
I still have alot of stuff on FAT, dispite the fact that I was not using microsoft for a signifigent period of time. Any bugger can read FAT. Hell, I haven't seen a floppy disk sold recently that wasn't preformated fat.
If this indeed is microsoft's IP, I think they are doing us a favor by charging for it. It's not like there are not alternatives.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
They're charging for their own implementation of it. Say you reverse engineer FAT (as virtually everyone has up to this point, its very simple and well documented now...). Then good for you. You're not required to spend a dime, or hire a lawyer, or sacrifice your first born or do anything whatsoever.
But M-soft did in fact create the standard and spec and if you want to be absolutely sure your FAT implementation is completely standards compliant...you can buy theirs. If you want.
Thats all this is.
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Not needed... you're confusing that with the requirement that an owner must defend a trademark or lose it. Non-enforcement doesn't invalidate a patent, only prior works can do that.
However, non-enforcing a patent and then allowing it to go into widespread use unchecked is a very slimeball thing to do. If somebody pointed out that FAT32 was owned by Microsoft, and there was no affordable licenses, the makers of FAT32-formatted devices would suddenly stop, turn around, and pick another, presumably less MS-compatible format.
If Microsoft chose to waive-off their patent into the public domain, they could do that. However, then they'd be allowing the open source world to have access to it too, and MS wouldn't want to do that.
By establishing a nominal fee, they prevent open source programs from formatting things to FAT32, but allow the making of FAT32-formatted devices to go on relatively unhindered...
Believe me, I'm all for a good conspiracy theory. Especially involving Microsoft or SCO.. But I'm pretty sure that's why they break compatibility with every NTFS revision. Not at all related to this move. As a post above stated, I'm pretty sure this has to do with the antitrust thing, so that Bill can get up there and say look we licenced FAT. We enabled users to remove the explorer icon. We're a great bunch of guys, see? Nevermind that messenger can't be removed, or that if you disable it, Outlook will re-enable it for you, and so will your security updates.
This isn't so much as encuraging NTFS but discuraging the drive/card makers from creating "THIN32" or whatever. If they were to be successful in rolling out their own new standard, then MS would be forced to license and implement that.
Reading the other comments I'm seeing that this is being considered as a move to protect the patent. Thats probably true.
On a different point I see a few comments on how the maximum amount is $250,000 and that such a small amount it's not worth caring about. I don't know what companies you guys work for but my company could barely spare 1/10 of that given the recent market. I don't know of any company that turns around and goes "1/4 million is that all? Nope don't need to know what for let me just sign the cheque". I'm left wondering if this will be enough of an issue that small companies will look elsewhere for small filesystem. In my companies case it isn't an issue as we made the run for linux already. I assume that microsoft has to worry about driving away to many of the small customers.
The big guys may rule the world today, but they where nobodies 20 years ago and have to worry about those small fry that have the right combination of talent and luck.
The filesystem world has got to be one of the most unorganized place. So unorganized I don't know how lawyers even want to deal with it.
For example sgi has xfs. xfs can be sneaked into linux. But xfs can be mounted remotely in a cluster via windows, solaris and irix. Theorectically you can do some of these things with windows filesystems too. There are so many damn loop holes, it's just a nasty place to try to come up with a straight profit if you ask me.
Windows can read it out of box; so can Linux; OSX probably can too. That's all major OSes right there, with no drivers needed.
Yes, OSX can. In fact even OS9 can. I'm not sure how far back it goes but I do remember reading a FAT32 formatted HDD on an OS8.5 machine.
Why then would they go about it in this manner?
NTFS is not useful for small volumes (less then 1Gb, I don't remember what the minimum NTFS volume size is off-hand). It also can't be used on read-only media (unlike FAT32).
FAT32 handles niches that NTFS simply won't fit into. There's no way that this will bring about 'complete' adoption of NTFS/WinFS. (If anything, it would push another open format such as one of the Linux filesystems or UDF.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
MS is trying to reduce the number of MP3 players that expose an easy to use file system interface rather than whatever DRM-of-the-day system is popular. MP3 players are becoming an _exceedingly_ low margin, high volume business, and MS is trying to make it more expensive to give people what they want ("just plug your device in and it works").
If it wasn't a big deal, there wouldn't be a quiet but forceful attempt to invalidate the patents going on.
Actually, the patent is not for the DOS-style fat, but for the vfat extensions, namely the way long file names are stored.
Also, because FAT32 is not suited for media under 128 MB, the patent is relevant to general computing these days, for 32 and 64 MB memory sticks and suchlike.
And it's worse than that because FAT-access is pretty much critical to a host of modern applications - most digital cameras use memory cards that read and write in that format, for example. Not being able to write FAT means no interoperability with third parties. That's plain extreme.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
May the moderators mod me down if this is going too far, but IMNSHO this is typical arrogant MS. They seem to think they're the only ones capable of implementing something correctly, despite all the evidence to the contrary. How many open standards (protocols, formats, etc) have they half-implemented (or just plain screwed up) and then claimed to have extended with their own half thought-out ideas? (Here's a tip MS: If you don't implement the whole standard in the first place, you're *branching* not extending, aren't you?). And how many times have closed-source competitors and open-source hackers re-implemented some format or protocol of MS's? And although I can't think of a good example off the top of my head, I seem to remember a number of times when the FLOSS implementation has been better and/or more flexible.
</rant>
MS are charging companies that use their implementation of the technology in order to ship pre-formatted media. They are not going after anyone who's implemented their own FAT-compatible system.
Similar to your example, I could write a FAT driver too, and not pay MS a penny.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I think this was more of a test bed to see if they could pull out an old stealth patent and make it fly.
If this works, plan to see more in the future, with wide ranging consequences...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Canar,
That can be your last response or not, but trust me -- you're quite a bit off.
Sessions are indeed supported by ISO-9660 circuitry -- by the readers. Where they aren't supported worth a damn are in the writing process. Drag and drop for CD's w/ ISO-9660 does not exist because it cannot exist -- the file system is too static. DirectCD (and other CD-RW solutions) use a packetized file system -- another way for referring to sector oriented. Notably, they do not work by default.
That's the fact you've utterly missed. Let me describe the process of using an MP3 player that doesn't support the MSC profile (the one that makes the device show up as a hard drive):
1) Insert CD with driver and software.
2) Install software.
3) Insert device.
4) Launch software.
5) Learn software.
6) Manipulate it to move files as needed.
Compared to:
1) Insert device.
2) Copy files.
See, I can say this, because I'm looking at (no joke) my ELEVENTH MP3 PLAYER, just bought a few hours ago. (You may mock me for this.) I've used quite a few of these players. Things that don't show up as a drive -- don't just work -- well, they suck. FAT32 is the only game in town that "just works". The grand critique of DRM is that the user needs to learn a whole new interface paradigm, compared to what they're used to (just copy the files to the player and go, no need to view the latest bizarrely skinned application of the day).
Developing a competing standard isn't hard. Developing one that works on arbitrary machines -- that's impossible, because MS controls what ships. You being able to only use your player on your computer is only bad to you. Remember, part of the DRM game is suppressing file sharing; the idea of "heh, that's a cool song, lemme pull it off your player" is anathema. Anything that suppresses this is Good.
I'm proud of your dad, but *ahem* I'm no slouch either. MS is caught between a rock and a hard place -- they're traditionally the 800lb gorilla that's enabled as much access to their users as possible. (Little realized fact is that MS was the first company to embed MP3 into their OS, through an ACM driver.) But they're doing alot to try to woo Hollywood -- Black Hat Windows last year was held w/ the SMPTE meeting (hollywood video folks), and MS had rented out an entire theatre to try to woo the guys to Windows Media for Theatres. Pushing the industry has become a story of compromise, and compromise means your system follows restrictions you didn't select (like your DVD player showing you 45 seconds of copyright warnings / movie previews whether you want to see them or not).
Migrating people away from FAT, which (as a sector level interface) is very difficult to add fine grained permissions to, is part of such compromises.
This comment is just wrong, and I think you know it: "Businesses will be eager to have the opportunity to use a supported codebase for their FAT access and thus not have to deal with possible bug problems in their own code." Businesses are never, ever eager to change something that works. Ever. EVER. Ask your dad.
Not to mention I think some of the FAT implementations are in hardware. (Note, I said 'I think'.) Switching to the MS code would be a total rebuild.
What are you saying with regards to China? This doesn't affect them, because they'll just ignore the rules? So it doesn't matter that MS is trying to set them? That means a plan will fail, not that there is no plan.
I will make one claim of ignorance...I don't know what YHBT means. Certainly I don't think you're stupid; you're pretty well spoken. But you're a bit misinformed -- you see the general rule (people can use competing standards, a $0.25 per device is cheap) and ignore the particularities of the computer market (anything that doesn't "just work" fails enough to kill profit margins, and those teeny chinese co