I would say it's a very definite posibility that they're charging for FAT simply because it's the only widely supported read-write file system for sharing data between OSes. It's also likely that due to FAT's limitation (and cross-platform support) FAT will be no longer supported in some near-future release of Windows. That would, of course, mean that vendors will invariably move to support a file system which Microsoft does approve, otherwise their devices won't work in 90% of users' PCs. And supporting NTFS would mean making their devices virtually unusable with Macintosh, Linux, OS/2, PalmOS, BeOS/Zeta, QNX, etc.
But... the interesting thing is that IBM also holds rights to FAT. It's been one of the supported base file systems in OS/2 since way back when MS and IBM were collaborating on OS/2 development, and it's also part of IBM's PC-DOS. FAT has never been mentioned as one of the pieces of OS/2 that MS gets royalties for. But IBM has not been known as a company to make a stand against Microsoft even when every indication was that IBM had the right and the means to do so.
But the OS/2 support for FAT is also now a part of eComStation (www.ecomstation.com) meaning there are several legitimate vendors of the FAT file systems outside of Redmond.
While Microsoft's new "licensing" of the "technology" for FAT might be enough to get people into court and waste their money, it would likely not hold up in any case that actually made it to a judge rather than being settled out of court.
Slashdot Mirror
I would say it's a very definite posibility that they're charging for FAT simply because it's the only widely supported read-write file system for sharing data between OSes. It's also likely that due to FAT's limitation (and cross-platform support) FAT will be no longer supported in some near-future release of Windows. That would, of course, mean that vendors will invariably move to support a file system which Microsoft does approve, otherwise their devices won't work in 90% of users' PCs. And supporting NTFS would mean making their devices virtually unusable with Macintosh, Linux, OS/2, PalmOS, BeOS/Zeta, QNX, etc.
/ ecomstation -apps.php
But... the interesting thing is that IBM also holds rights to FAT. It's been one of the supported base file systems in OS/2 since way back when MS and IBM were collaborating on OS/2 development, and it's also part of IBM's PC-DOS. FAT has never been mentioned as one of the pieces of OS/2 that MS gets royalties for. But IBM has not been known as a company to make a stand against Microsoft even when every indication was that IBM had the right and the means to do so.
But the OS/2 support for FAT is also now a part of eComStation (www.ecomstation.com) meaning there are several legitimate vendors of the FAT file systems outside of Redmond.
While Microsoft's new "licensing" of the "technology" for FAT might be enough to get people into court and waste their money, it would likely not hold up in any case that actually made it to a judge rather than being settled out of court.
Don "Freiheit" Eitner
Hobby eComstation & OS/2 software developer
http://freiheit.syntheticdimension.net