Linux Patch Clears the Air For Use of Microsoft's FAT Filesystem

Ars Technica is reporting that a new kernel patch may provide a workaround to allow use of Microsoft's FAT file system on Linux without paying licensing fees. "Andrew Tridgell, one of the lead developers behind the Samba project, published a patch last week that will alter the behavior of the Linux FAT implementation so that it will not generate both short and long filenames. In situations where the total filename fits within the 11-character limit, the filesystem will generate only a short name. When the filename exceeds that length, it will only generate a long name and will populate the short name value with 11 invalid characters so that it is ignored by the operating system."

Comments

It's time to show MS the power of *nix

[DigitalReverend]

We need to fight back and stop fulfilling http requests from anything Microsoft. Hell even go deep enough to determin the OS. If you run MS, good luck using the web. Microsoft needs a smackdown, and there is enough of us out there that administer websites and such that we could have a huge impact. It's time to tell Microsoft, "free FAT or no web for you!"

Re:Who in their right mind would want to use Ext3?

[lisaparratt]

Ok, I'll qualify that. If you want your product to nosedive, because the only people who're able to use it think never paying for anything and wearing rotating beanies are good ideas, then go ahead and use ExtWhatever. Otherwise, FAT is a prerequisite.

Re:MSFT can't give out VFAT, but can give out C#/M

[rec9140]

Only portions of C# crud are ISO standards. The .netrash and other items are not, thus are infestations that need to be banned from linux.