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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."
Is FAT used for anything other than USB drives?
You get my support if you add in something about a requirement that it should be possible to build a working example of whatever you're patenting using the patent documentation(you know, so that patents actually serve their stated purpose).
As a long-time user of Linux who is currently using Microsoft Windows XP, the whole vfat (FAT with Win95 long file names) patent and how Microsoft has handled this patent makes me feel that maybe Microsoft is engaging in the same kind of monopolistic behavior that they engaged in when they destroyed Netscape in the 1990s.
I'm sure people know about Microsoft's patent violation lawsuit against TomTom; if you don't the Wikipedia is your friend. What a lot of people don't know is that Microsoft made some changes to Vista so that you can no longer easily use an unpatented filesystem like ext2 (Linux's 1990s file system which nicely enough is supported in Windows with a couple of different 3rd party drivers).
For me, it seems very suspicious that Microsoft made some changes to Vista that make it very difficult to use filesystems not patented by Microsoft around the same time they used licenses for their filesystems as a revenue source.
I posted a blog about this back in March and to quote that blog entry:
What am I missing here ?
Will Groklaw one day be reporting about MSFT v. SPI ?
Sure you can. You can claim damages for damages that occurred between your becoming aware of infringement and filing suit. However, the other side can raise laches as a defense. If you delayed unreasonably in taking action, then the judge might bar your claim to earlier damages.
What is reasonable and what is not? You can't look at the patent statute to find out, laches are a judicial remedy for inequitable conduct. Thus, you have to go through Federal Circuit cases to find cases that are most similar (and probably distinguishable given a particular set of facts).
It would probably get very complicated in case where a third-party has allegedly infringed for some time, but the patent owner sued (or countersued) a new alleged infringer based on recent conduct. If the patent owner did not plan on suing the third-party, then why is unfair to wait until the recent conduct before suing the new alleged infringer?
Hopefully, soon, we can start using UDF instead of FAT. Cross-OS compatibility is pretty much there, though FAT's support is still the most broad.