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Microsoft FAT Patent Upheld
theodp writes "After initially rejecting Microsoft's File Allocation Table (FAT) patents, the USPTO has ruled them valid. From the article: 'Microsoft has won a debate where they were the only party allowed to speak, in that the patent re-examination process bars the public from rebutting arguments made by Microsoft, said unimpressed Public Patent Foundation President Dan Ravicher.'"
How will this affect the ability to read FAT filesystems under Linux?
What exactly would prevent these low margin, high volume USB key manufacturers selling their memory sticks unformatted? It's not like hard drive manufacturers have to pay a FAT tax -- it's just the device manufacturers whose stuff actually uses FAT, like digital camera makers.
I'm under no obligation to use FAT on my USB sticks. They come with a FAT filing table, but the functionality of the device isn't compromised by my using a different file system. USB stick manufacturers could simply sell their wares unformatted like the old floppy days, or you could pay $0.50 more and get a formatted one. Let the consumer decide.
As for digital cameras... well that was their decision. Unless I, as a consumer, am going to get fined for buying a piece of hardware that was unlicenced I don't care. The patents on FAT were no secret. They were, as are all the other patents, kept in a public place, next to the patents for lenses, CCDs, batteries and jpeg compression. As with any other patent, if you want to use the tech you have to pay the licence... and then pass that cost onto the customer.
Having a single filesystem that is accessible to all is good for everyone, especially Windows users. If Microsoft make it difficult to use digital cameras with their operating systems then they're going to piss a lot of people off. Digital cameras are one of the few reasons people buy a new computer so making it difficult to use digital cameras on Windows systems is not in their interests but perhaps worse for Microsoft is that people will install software that lets them use EXT3, Reiser4, UFS or heavens forbid, HFS+. People could use harddisks from other operating systems, with no need to defrag, decent meta information and genuine multi-user support!
I work with OS X, Debian and NT4 on a daily basis. The only way I can predicitably transfer files between them is using FAT16/32, and the limiting factor is NTs lousy support for alien filesystems. Microsoft should place FAT in the public domain. Its not strong enough to warrent a licence, and should really have become extinct along side the floppy disk. Charging people a licence to use a technology that was chosen because of a weakness in your main project, your operating system, is as lame as lecturers teaching from their own book.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
it's just the device manufacturers whose stuff actually uses FAT, like digital camera makers.
But when a user pops their CF/SD/XD/whatever card out of their camera, they're going to want to access it without installing drivers, etc.
Personally I don't mind cameras, etc using ext2, or even better - a proper flash filesystem designed to deal with the problems inherent in writing to flash. But then I don't use Windows...
I'd be interested to know what the monopoly-police think about this - it seems that requiring people to pay a licence fee to use the only supported filesystem in the monopoly OS to allow interoperability with other devices might be considered an abuse of their market position.
It's also worth thinking about - the Linux kernel infringes this patent. Is Linux going to have FAT support ripped out of it now? That'd be really bad coz suddenly it can't interoperate with all those devices using FAT.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Every OS supports it for the purposes of reading DVDs. It may not have been designed for flash drives, but it works on them fine. And it's an ISO standard.
I am trolling
The grandparent posted is correct.
1) Even if they do have FAT pre-installed, that doesn't matter. A patent applies to the device that is using the FAT system (camera, computer, etc.), not the media it is on. (For example: A patent woudl apply to a printing press, but not to the book that is printed by the press.)
2) His point is that they don't have to have it pre-installed anyway. The device you put it in can do the formatting easily enough.
Also, just because something is modded-up that you think is wrong, doesn't mean that the moderation system is bad. You may be modded down merely for the comment.