Slashdot Mirror
Open Source ExFAT File System Reaches 1.0 Status
Titus Andronicus writes "fuse-exfat, a GPLv3 implementation of the exFAT file system for Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X, has reached 1.0 status, according to an announcement from Andrew Nayenko, the primary developer. exFAT is a file system designed for sneaker-netting terabyte-scale files and groups of files on flash drives and memory cards between and among Windows, OS X, and consumer electronics devices. It was introduced by Microsoft in late 2006. Will fuse-exfat cut into Microsoft's juicy exFAT licensing revenue? Will Microsoft litigate fuse-exfat's developers and users into patent oblivion? Will there be a DKMS dynamic kernel module version of the software, similar to the ZFS on Linux project? All that remains to be seen. ReadWrite, The H, and Phoronix cover the story."
As far as I know it's part of OS X since Snow Leopard. But I could totally use the Linux support.
You do know what a "Sneaker Net" is dont you ? I guess not. It is using media such as SD Card or USB stick or hard drive to move files from one location to another by walking ie on your feet that are wearing sneakers, also very similar to using a "V8" net as in "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a V8 station wagon loaded with tapes / drives hurtling across the country"
Standardise all you want. You should know what'll happen. Windows will not support it out the box, and if Windows doesn't support it, that filesystem is effectively dead. Who is going to want a USB stick formatted so it won't work on the operating system running on upwards of ninety percent of desktops and laptops?
As the name clearly states, this is a FUSE implementation of exFAT, i.e. userspace. In which case DKMS is as useful as a fork for soup.
So not only we get the news two days after Phoronix [1], but the poster has no idea on what he's talking about.
[1] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI3OTQ
Microsoft has already won by having ExtFAT part of the SDXC spec, so every big SD card comes with it. The only thing the Open Source world can do is damage control by implementing it and thus staying useful.
Based on their previous actions, they will allow the use of this project in distros but will sue any commercial implementation that uses it. So they haven't sued Ubuntu or Mint, but have sued TomTom.
Am I allowed to use this implementation?
Depends on what you want to use for: as a form of expression, you should be able to. Use the binary form to read/write, all depends on the MS patents and whether or not MS grants you a license.
Will Microsoft litigate fuse-exfat's developers and users into patent oblivion?
Regarding developers: the software is posted as source code with instructions on how to install them from source. Being source code, is a form of expression, protected by copyright. As such, can a commercial entity try to block the dissemination of the "speech" that the source code constitutes?
Mind you, any existing patents should not play any role into it: after all a patent is a public disclosure of methods/constructs that constitute the invention (the text of the patent is not copyrighted), so the source code should not be anything but an alternative form of expression of the same.
Regarding users: yes, using the compiled binaries would violate the temporary monopoly granted by any existing patents. However, I can't imagine any corporations starting to track which hobbyist home users:
1. downloaded the source code - should not be, per se, illegal - the copyleft license allows you to do it and the patent should not trump the copyright.
2. for each of them, ask for a discovery to see if that source code has been compiled - again, compilation should not be illegal, I'm obtaining a derivative form of expression and the GPL copyright license allows me to do it
3. use the binary - this is the only step that would violate the patent
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Ext2/3/4 sucks as an interchange format. In short, it does too much. Any filesystem sufficiently complex to support real workloads is going to impose an excessive implementation burden for sneakernet. The bizarre thing is that we have a minimalist filesystem that can represent the file model with fidelity (large files, unicode names, etc) that is implemented in every modern OS: UDF. If it can read DVDs, it can read UDF and every general purpose OS released in the last decade can write to the appropriate version, 2.01. Not for nothing is it called the Universal Disk Format.
The real mystery is how did Microsoft con an industry into paying for such a lousy alternative to UDF. SDXC requires exFAT, so every new camera and anything else that hopes to read these high capacity sdcards has to cope with licensing requirements. WTF.
ahh sneakernet... god I love wifi.
Wifi is famously good when transferring terabyte sized files like exFAT is intended for.
You can call FAT and its variants a lot of things, but "modern" isn't one of them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Not that we're anywhere close to terabyte flash drives.
You sure about that?
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/7/3847628/kingston-announces-1tb-flash-drive
They're not cheap yet, but they're here.
Ahem. I believe Kingston demo'd one at CES this year, and you can buy a 512G flash drive today. Cheap? No, but I'll put money on being able to purchase a 1TB thumbdrive-style flash drive in 18 months, max.
I spent the last few days re-doing my home backup system. With an equal number of OSX and Linux devices, and no windows devices, the best option for a drive that could go back and forth with minimal custom/flaky driver installs -- but still handle files over 4gb was, of all things, NTFS. I was ... well, frankly, more pissed off about that fact than a normal person should be about disk formats.
Finally (and what I dug into this thread to say) is that Station Wagons have craptastic lag.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer