Slashdot Mirror
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."
The point has to be securing the patent. If they charge people to license something, they're establishing the fact that they do "own" this technology.
For things like flash drives, and other portable storage devices FAT is good because it is pretty universally supported by most operating systems.
They're licensing FAT32 which isn't that old, in reality.
It's also very, very simple to speak.
And, it's coming into use as the filesystem of choice for digital cameras and memory cards to use (because of it's simplicity.)
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.
It's not great, but it's simple...and MS invented it...one of the few good things they've come up with, I'd say (Windows XP and Server 2003 being the others.)
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.
-
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
This isn't about making money, and it isn't about protecting a patent. This is simply an exercise for the benefit of the courts: Microsoft will be holding FAT (along with lots of other things) up as examples of how they're making their standards available to the competition.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Before anybody chimes in with yet another "patents aren't trademarks and don't have to be defended as vigorously" comment, I'd like to remind readers of the doctrine of laches, which states that a plaintiff who harms the defendant by delaying legal action (such as by submarining a patent for years) may not be able to recover damages for infringements that occurred prior to bringing the lawsuit.
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.
-
I suspect Microsoft current trend of licensing every protocol and file format they possibly can is not a small thing.
IANAL, yet I have the sneaky feeling the terms of those licenses preclude GPL products from using protocols or file formats covered by them, *even those licensed for free*.
As to whether or not those licenses are necessary is a great question. Do you really need a license to read an XML file? According to microsoft, you "may", since "Microsoft may have patents and/or patent applications that are necessary for you to license in order to make, sell, or distribute software programs that read or write files that comply with the Microsoft specifications for the Office Schemas.".
Worry.
For those of you too lazy or of poor reading comprehension skills...
FAT is an old time file system created in the days of DOS. Its very simple, requiring little overhead in computation and space. Modern file systems are much more efficient at large media sizes, but for your floppies, flash cards and other small portable media, FAT works really, really well since you don't need a beefy device processor to handle it, and its simple enough to create the software to work with it that any competant OS programmer could write a FAT wrapper.
Microsoft is NOT charging for FAT itself. Most people for the past 20 years have reverse engineered FAT because it is very simple. It is widespread, virtually every widely used OS supports it. They're not trying to squeeze money from any of these people.
What they are charging for is their own implementation of FAT. Since they did in fact create the standard, presumably a microsoft licensed FAT implementation will be entirely compatible with FAT since they give you the code and official specs to base your system around. This is what they are charging for. Nothing else.
Now for those who are going to ask "but why would someone pay when you can find those reverse engineered specs easily...". Well, thats a business decision. Do you trust those specs enough? Or "just to be safe" do you want to pay microsoft for their guaranteed implementation?
And thats all this is about. Really, honestly, a non-issue.
-
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/02/13/windo ws.xp/story.gates.jpg
http://www.pckurier.pl/archiwum/artykuly/wilczek_t adeusz/2001_02_6/gates.jpg
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.
If they got a patent when they created FAT, it would be near the end of its life (FAT32 might have a few years to go). But other FAT implementations have been around since before the patent was applied for OR microsoft has simply ignored them. If you don't defend your patent with due diligance, (say, wait 15 years to sue someone) you can run into legal difficulties.
And since FAT implementations are nearly ubiquitous today, trying to sue them all would be an exercise in wasting time and the patent would expire before you've even begun litigation.
It seems pretty pointless to try and enforce the patent at this point. The article addresses this to an extent in m-soft's IP policy ideals...
-
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.
I am offering a direct replacement for FAT32. Fat is so .. demeaning and 32 is so .. yesterday. I am liscensing Portly64 to anyone who needs a break from the 1/4 million M$ fees, only 1/8 million.
They will need to change their name to the Doreedos project (with Nacho Cheese!)
I agree with your statement that the canonical implementation has some value, though.
With great power comes great fan noise.
FAT is positively not good for flash drives because these systems will begin to fail have a set number of writes to a specific area of the memory.
FAT has no methodology for spreading writes around the system, in fact it will write to the logical begining of the filespace most frequently, with the number of writes dropping as you travel further into the system. This leads to a flash drive to premature failure, thousands of writes to the begining of the disk (like say, the FAT table) making the entire memory space unusable (for FAT, anyways) while the end has been largely untouched.
Other, GPLed systems are much better for flash, such as JFFS. The only reason to use FAT is if you're interfacing with a windows box and are too lazy to provide translation.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
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.
We are only accessing FAT32 file systems, not using them.
I'll remember that one when the RIAA come around. "I'm only accessing thousands of MP3s, not using them, so I'm off totally scot-free!"
mogorific carpentry experiments
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?
Well if you use non-retarded memory like say most CF storage then it's not a problem because the flash cells are never physically rewritten the same way twice. This keeps things like the beginning of the cells from wearing out while the later portions are never touched. For MMC and some other dump flash varients this logic has to be done in the controlling device rather than the memory itself.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I had a conversation with one of their licensing officers as I was afraid my 10-a-year GPS logger project was in danger. He explained this was an encouragement to have everyone implement FAT32 and LFN the same way, by using their reference design. All this to prevent incompatible implementations down the road.
Microsoft's fear is that a large camera or MP3 player manufacturer 'gets it wrong' and MS is blamed for things not working correctly. MS then has to invest in a work-around, handle patches, bad press etc..
The license comes with source code for a reference implementation, so it will save manufacturers time and R&D cost.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
M$ Marketing person reads in the morning paper that America is becoming increasingly obese.
While walking through the cafeteria, same person overhears two engineers comment about M$ owning a patent on FAT.
Light bulb goes off in the dim-witted marketing persons head - Cha-ching!
Of course, Linux companies aren't worried about it.
It's us overweight users and coders that should be afraid!
Let's see, after I make out my $699 check for SCO, I have to send how much to Bill & Co?
My mom always told me I was just big boned. I guess I'm just boned. Again.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
IANAABIDUG [I am not an artist but I do use Gimp]
;-)
http://iahu.ca:8080/finished.png
Merry Holidays!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
They could always centralize kernel development in another country where the FAT patents are not recognized by law.
.
That was my first thought, but the license (referenced by the previous article) appears to only apply to solid state media, not hard drives.
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.
From This Page (FAT File System Technology and Patent License)
# A license for removable solid state media manufacturers to preformat the media, such as compact flash memory cards, to the Microsoft FAT file system format, and to preload data onto such preformatted media using the Microsoft FAT file system format. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per manufacturer.
# A license for manufacturers of certain consumer electronics devices. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit for each of the following types of devices that use removable solid state media to store data:
That is, they're licensing
- preformatted removeable solid-state media
- devices which use removeable solid-state media
So, unless you make solid-state media or consumer-electronics devices which use them, you're HOME FREE.Apparently, they're NOT (currently) requiring licenses for the (generic, in any/all cases, "we own this patented technology") USE of FAT (eg OS drivers).
IN fact, what it looks like, is Microsoft trying to make a few bux of the plethora of Digital Cameras out there.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
FAt is patented. This example shows how important the interoperability privilegue was that FFII got into the EU Parl proposal of the software patents directive. http://swpat.ffii.org
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>
In a case where someone really does have the rights, who cares? I mean, it is there property, and just because they want to collect on it, is there right. Now if it was SCO, then I could see some room for complaint. But if the disk makers decide to move to some other format, that is fine. But in my mind, I don't see the big issue.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
If you prefer, look at it this way - perhaps MS realise how much of a mess they've made of implementing certain things in the past, and so recognise that if they can mess it up, so can anyone else. That may be part of the reason why - acknowledging that they're nothing special when it comes to writing software.
Hell, recently there was a problem with LG not implementing the "cache flush" instruction on some of their CD drives, instead using it for "update firmware". That's a monumentally stupid thing to do when implementing an accepted standard. Given that that happened, don't you think it possible that some large manufacturer could mess up their FAT implementation?
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 ----
You take over 80 pictures a day?
Do you work in professional photography? Are you a close friend of somebody who does? No? Then are you qualified to make ASSertions about what a professional photographer would consider a "reasonable" rate of still photography?
On another matter (because I strive not to merely regurgitate articles for karma in my messages) it is unlikely that Microsoft would sue anyone for patent infringement relating to FAT. Patent suits normally run $3m to $6m, and by stating in advance that a license is worth no more than $250k Microsoft is ensuring it would never collect more than that in damages. Moreover, Microsoft has a history of not suing for patent infringement. Although at any given time it is engaged in a dozen or more patent suits it is always on the receiving end. Lots of little companies have their eyes set on the Microsoft pot o' gold... Patent litigation is not at all profitable for Microsoft.
So in conclusion, the worth of the license is mainly in the canonical source code.
With great power comes great fan noise.
You may go the other way: use the ext2 or anything best suited to flash and supply the opensource Windows driver for it.
The Free file system best suited to write-few-read-many memory would probably be JFFS, but Google doesn't know about any efforts to implement a generic JFFS driver on Windows.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default. asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/pro ddocs/standard/ntfs_compared_to_fat_and_fat32.asp
minimum volume size for NTFS is 10MB.
and if you're using a RO volume, why bother using FAT/FAT32? FAT/FAT32 are being used for consumer devices in which people *need* write access (MP3 players, eBooks, USB keychain storage devices, etc).
sure, there is a very limited market in which people are using FAT/FAT32 for embedded devices... but if they are using FAT/FAT32, the environment is likely WinCE, in which case licensing is covered.
i stand by my theory that Microsoft is hoping this will speed adoption of another filesystem. NTFS isn't farfetched, especially with the move towards DRM.
A company has one year (365 days) from the time they first sell an invention to get their FAT axes into the patent office and make an application for a patent. If they blow it by even one day, their bright idea is prior art and can never be patented.
What is in those four patents that wasn't in WIN 95? Here is the link to the USPTO patent number search page: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm
Plug in those patent numbers M$ has on their web page and look at the dates. Are they less than 365 days after WIN 95 was released? Or are they more?
Even if M$ ever had a patent on FAT (which they never did), every patent prior to mid 1987 has expired. They have a lifespan limited by law, and old patents before 1995 had 17 years lifespan from the day the USPTO received the patent application. Most patents are not granted until 18 months of examination, so the date of issue is not the date the clock starts ticking. Therefore FAT would be public domain by now even if it ever had been patented (which it wasn't because M$ didn't invent it).
M$ is charging $250,000.00 for something in the public domain. That is legal, but there is nothing illegal about you, or me, selling the same thing if we can find damn fool suckers willing to pay us a quarter-megabuck for it.
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