Microsoft FAT Licensing Plan - No Big Deal? 235
prostoalex writes "InternetNews.com describes the reaction to Microsoft's decision on FAT licensing. It doesn't look like the company is expecting to make any significant money out of licenses (there's also a cap of $250K, so none of the big guys will have to pay millions to Microsoft). It also doesn't look like Linux companies are stressed over this decision. "We are only accessing FAT32 file systems, not using them. This licensing program is of little interest to SuSE", a Novell/SuSE spokesperson said."
...Patent Issue (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:...Patent Issue (Score:3, Interesting)
They already own the patent -- the PTO granted it to them, and patents (unlike trademarks) don't need to be defended in order to maintain their ownership.
Re:...Patent Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
However, non-enforcing a patent and then allowing it to go into widespread use unchecked is a very slimeball thing to do. If somebody pointed out that FAT32 was owned by Microsoft, and there was no affordable licenses, the makers of FAT32-formatted devices would suddenly stop, turn around, and pick another, presumably less MS-compatible format.
If Microsoft chose to waive-off their patent into the public domain, they could do that. However, then they'd be allowing the open source world to have access to it too, and MS wouldn't want to do that.
By establishing a nominal fee, they prevent open source programs from formatting things to FAT32, but allow the making of FAT32-formatted devices to go on relatively unhindered...
Re:...Patent Issue (Score:3, Informative)
As such it is virtually irrelevant to the general computing field these days and really only applies to those manufacturers who supply preformated storage devices, most of whom use good, old fashioned, DOS era FAT.
KFG
Re:...Patent Issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, because FAT32 is not suited for media under 128 MB, the patent is relevant to general computing these days, for 32 and 64 MB memory sticks and suchlike.
Re:...Patent Issue (Score:2)
IANAL, but from a quick glance at the abstracts of the claims for these patents it appears that MS has acquired a dodgy title to techniques that have either already been in the public domain, or have escaped into it due to lack of MS's enforcement:
#5,579,517 - Common name space for long & short file names, patent issued in 1996. Didn't MS already do this with Windows 95, whic
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:...I Spoke to them (Score:3, Insightful)
May the moderators mod me down if this is going too far, but IMNSHO this is typical arrogant MS. They seem to think they're the only ones capable of implementing something correctly, despite all the evidence to the contrary. How many ope
Re:...I Spoke to them (Score:4, Interesting)
Hell, recently there was a problem with LG not implementing the "cache flush" instruction on some of their CD drives, instead using it for "update firmware". That's a monumentally stupid thing to do when implementing an accepted standard. Given that that happened, don't you think it possible that some large manufacturer could mess up their FAT implementation?
Re:...I Spoke to them (Score:2)
Microsoft's fear is that a large camera or MP3 player manufacturer 'gets it wrong' and MS is blamed for things not working correctly. MS then has to invest in a work-around, handle patches, bad press etc..
You might want to take the MS spin with a grain of salt. I am sure they are just doing it to get some revenge on the OSS groups who have implemented Samba et al.
-a
This isn't about patents... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This isn't about patents... (Score:4, Interesting)
Slashdot says: They're making us pay money to use FAT!
Microsoft says: We own FAT. We are the only ones who are allowed to use it. We will now let everyone use it for a fee, thus allowing others to use our things. So we're more open than we used to be.
The day after
Re:This isn't about patents... (Score:2)
Re:This isn't about patents... (Score:2)
Re:This isn't about patents... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This isn't about patents... ITS ABOUT LAWSUITS (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This isn't about patents... ITS ABOUT LAWSUITS (Score:2)
Microsoft licensing program (Score:5, Informative)
I suspect Microsoft current trend of licensing every protocol and file format they possibly can is not a small thing.
IANAL, yet I have the sneaky feeling the terms of those licenses preclude GPL products from using protocols or file formats covered by them, *even those licensed for free*.
As to whether or not those licenses are necessary is a great question. Do you really need a license to read an XML file? According to microsoft, you "may", since "Microsoft may have patents and/or patent applications that are necessary for you to license in order to make, sell, or distribute software programs that read or write files that comply with the Microsoft specifications for the Office Schemas." [microsoft.com].
Worry.
Re:Microsoft licensing program (Score:2)
Quite possibly, and that's their right. Don't like it, come up with your own formats and protocols, in the same way that someone who doesn't like the GPL can "write their own damn code" (as I've often heard here).
That's your choice - either comply with the originator's licence (be it the GPL for code, MS's licence for their stuff, or whatever), or create your own version. It wor
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft licensing program (Score:3, Insightful)
Similar to your example, I could write a FAT driver too, and not pay MS a penny.
Lets clear away some myths and FUD (Score:5, Informative)
FAT is an old time file system created in the days of DOS. Its very simple, requiring little overhead in computation and space. Modern file systems are much more efficient at large media sizes, but for your floppies, flash cards and other small portable media, FAT works really, really well since you don't need a beefy device processor to handle it, and its simple enough to create the software to work with it that any competant OS programmer could write a FAT wrapper.
Microsoft is NOT charging for FAT itself. Most people for the past 20 years have reverse engineered FAT because it is very simple. It is widespread, virtually every widely used OS supports it. They're not trying to squeeze money from any of these people.
What they are charging for is their own implementation of FAT. Since they did in fact create the standard, presumably a microsoft licensed FAT implementation will be entirely compatible with FAT since they give you the code and official specs to base your system around. This is what they are charging for. Nothing else.
Now for those who are going to ask "but why would someone pay when you can find those reverse engineered specs easily...". Well, thats a business decision. Do you trust those specs enough? Or "just to be safe" do you want to pay microsoft for their guaranteed implementation?
And thats all this is about. Really, honestly, a non-issue.
Reverse engineered specs not necessary (Score:5, Informative)
I agree with your statement that the canonical implementation has some value, though.
Re:Reverse engineered specs not necessary (Score:4, Informative)
Patent license, not a specification. Sample code (Score:2, Informative)
On another matter (because I strive not to merely regurgitate articles for k
Re:Lets clear away some myths and FUD (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lets clear away some myths and FUD (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah.. well. still, I'm sharpening my pitchfork anyway.
Re:Lets clear away some myths and FUD (Score:2)
If you don't have anything nice to say about someone, don't say anything at all?
Re:Lets clear away some myths and FUD (Score:5, Informative)
The original FAT filesystem was developed by Paul Allen for Disk BASIC (originally 1976??) - i.e. a standalone BASIC interperter that did not require an OS. A version of Disk BASIC was ported over to Seattle Computer's 8086 system about November 1979 - 3 months later Tim Patterson of SCP got tired of waiting for Digital research to ship CP/M-86 and proceeded to write QDOS. Tim adopted the FAT system from Disk-BASIC to QDOS, figuring it was a bit more flexible than the bitmap allocation used on CP/M.
The 8.3 filename convention was adopted from CP/M which was presumably adopted from DEC's RSX-11. Needless to say, there is no way that MS could assert patent rights to FAT using 8.3 filenames.
Re:Lets clear away some myths and FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Lets clear away some myths and FUD (Score:2)
They're selling an implementation?
The only one getting FAT... (Score:3, Funny)
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/02/13/windo ws.xp/story.gates.jpg
http://www.pckurier.pl/archiwum/artykuly/wilczek_t adeusz/2001_02_6/gates.jpg
Let's not lie to ourselves (Score:2)
Re:Let's not lie to ourselves (Score:2)
Re:Let's not lie to ourselves (Score:2)
Re:Let's not lie to ourselves (Score:2)
Re:Let's not lie to ourselves (Score:2)
I had to format a FAT32 partition on an SDCard for my Zaurus... I formatted it on a SuSE system with a USB card reader.
Portly64 (Score:3, Funny)
Why FAT32 over ISO-9660? (Score:2, Informative)
- Level 1 support of ISO-9660 would kick you back to the days of 8.3 style file names. Level 2 and 3 would get you up to 32 characters, but that still isn't on-par with modern OSes.
- You'd need to go to Level 3 in order to fragment files, but then you run into non-support in older OSes.
- ISS-9660 has some character limitations in file names, which means a Windows user would be forced to rename certain files when dragging them over from their HD. With FAT32 supported,
Re:Why FAT32 over ISO-9660? (Score:2)
Re:Why FAT32 over ISO-9660? (Score:2)
this could be a bad move (Score:4, Insightful)
On a different point I see a few comments on how the maximum amount is $250,000 and that such a small amount it's not worth caring about. I don't know what companies you guys work for but my company could barely spare 1/10 of that given the recent market. I don't know of any company that turns around and goes "1/4 million is that all? Nope don't need to know what for let me just sign the cheque". I'm left wondering if this will be enough of an issue that small companies will look elsewhere for small filesystem. In my companies case it isn't an issue as we made the run for linux already. I assume that microsoft has to worry about driving away to many of the small customers.
The big guys may rule the world today, but they where nobodies 20 years ago and have to worry about those small fry that have the right combination of talent and luck.
Re:this could be a bad move (Score:4, Informative)
I love the wording! (Score:5, Funny)
I'll remember that one when the RIAA come around. "I'm only accessing thousands of MP3s, not using them, so I'm off totally scot-free!"
It's a messy scene (Score:2, Insightful)
For example sgi has xfs. xfs can be sneaked into linux. But xfs can be mounted remotely in a cluster via windows, solaris and irix. Theorectically you can do some of these things with windows filesystems too. There are so many damn loop holes, it's just a nasty place to try to come up with a straight profit if you ask me.
Time to go on a diet (Score:3, Funny)
While walking through the cafeteria, same person overhears two engineers comment about M$ owning a patent on FAT.
Light bulb goes off in the dim-witted marketing persons head - Cha-ching!
Of course, Linux companies aren't worried about it.
It's us overweight users and coders that should be afraid!
Let's see, after I make out my $699 check for SCO, I have to send how much to Bill & Co?
My mom always told me I was just big boned. I guess I'm just boned. Again.
Why Microsoft is doing this (Score:4, Funny)
http://iahu.ca:8080/finished.png
Merry Holidays!
Tom
What's going on (Score:3, Insightful)
If it wasn't a big deal, there wouldn't be a quiet but forceful attempt to invalidate the patents going on.
Re:Utter Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
That can be your last response or not, but trust me -- you're quite a bit off.
Sessions are indeed supported by ISO-9660 circuitry -- by the readers. Where they aren't supported worth a damn are in the writing process. Drag and drop for CD's w/ ISO-9660 does not exist because it cannot exist -- the file system is too static. DirectCD (and other CD-RW solutions) use a packetized file system -- another way for referring to sector oriented. Notably, they do not work by default.
That's th
No big deal at all !!! (Score:5, Informative)
From This Page [microsoft.com] (FAT File System Technology and Patent License)
# A license for removable solid state media manufacturers to preformat the media, such as compact flash memory cards, to the Microsoft FAT file system format, and to preload data onto such preformatted media using the Microsoft FAT file system format. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per manufacturer.
# A license for manufacturers of certain consumer electronics devices. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit for each of the following types of devices that use removable solid state media to store data:
That is, they're licensing
- preformatted removeable solid-state media
- devices which use removeable solid-state media
So, unless you make solid-state media or consumer-electronics devices which use them, you're HOME FREE.Apparently, they're NOT (currently) requiring licenses for the (generic, in any/all cases, "we own this patented technology") USE of FAT (eg OS drivers).
IN fact, what it looks like, is Microsoft trying to make a few bux of the plethora of Digital Cameras out there.
Only Accessing (Score:3, Informative)
Who cares? (Score:2, Informative)
A decent technical overview of FAT found here... (Score:2)
http://home.freeuk.net/foxy2k/disk/disk1.htm [freeuk.net]
Patent Test Bed (Score:3, Insightful)
If this works, plan to see more in the future, with wide ranging consequences...
The actual issue is (Score:2)
(consipracy theory =+5) They're probably laughing at all of these posts and around the net with people trying to contemplat exactly what's going on.(/ct)
screw fscking them. Who wants to deal with a company like that? not me. Except for Office - which i have only for purpo
FAT is not M$'s (Score:3, Informative)
A company has one year (365 days) from the time they first sell an invention to get their FAT axes into the patent office and make an application for a patent. If they blow it by even one day, their bright idea is prior art and can never be patented.
What is in those four patents that wasn't in WIN 95? Here is the link to the USPTO patent number search page: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm [uspto.gov]
Plug in those patent numbers M$ has on their web page and look at the dates. Are they less than 365 days after WIN 95 was released? Or are they more?
Even if M$ ever had a patent on FAT (which they never did), every patent prior to mid 1987 has expired. They have a lifespan limited by law, and old patents before 1995 had 17 years lifespan from the day the USPTO received the patent application. Most patents are not granted until 18 months of examination, so the date of issue is not the date the clock starts ticking. Therefore FAT would be public domain by now even if it ever had been patented (which it wasn't because M$ didn't invent it).
M$ is charging $250,000.00 for something in the public domain. That is legal, but there is nothing illegal about you, or me, selling the same thing if we can find damn fool suckers willing to pay us a quarter-megabuck for it.
Re:First Post (Score:3, Informative)
Re:First Post (Score:3, Interesting)
FAT has no methodology for spreading writes around the system, in fact it will write to the logical begining of the filespace most frequently, with the number of writes dropping as you travel further into the system. This leads to a flash drive to premature failure, thousands of writes to the begining of the disk (like say, the FAT table) making the entire memory
Re:First Post (Score:2)
How many times are you going to take a picture with that digital camera, anyway?
Re:First Post (Score:2)
Re:First Post (Score:2, Informative)
You take over 80 pictures a day?
Do you work in professional photography? Are you a close friend of somebody who does? No? Then are you qualified to make ASSertions about what a professional photographer would consider a "reasonable" rate of still photography?
Re:First Post (Score:2)
Re:First Post (Score:2)
Re:First Post (Score:2)
Re:First Post (Score:3, Informative)
Re:First Post (Score:2)
Someone else mentioned write cycles around 10,000 before a card starts to fail, but that's not a lot if you're using the thing every day, and take hundreds of shots per session. Which most folk won't do, of course.
It's called "wear leveling" (Score:2)
Re:First Post (Score:3, Informative)
It's also very, very simple to speak.
And, it's coming into use as the filesystem of choice for digital cameras and memory cards to use (because of it's simplicity.)
Windows can read it out of box; so can Linux; OSX probably can too. That's all major OSes right there, with no drivers needed.
It's not great, but it's simple...and MS invented it...one of the few good things they've come up with, I'd say (Windows XP and Server 2003 being the others.)
Just FYI (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, OSX can. In fact even OS9 can. I'm not sure how far back it goes but I do remember reading a FAT32 formatted HDD on an OS8.5 machine.
because it's standard... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:because it's standard... (Score:3, Insightful)
XFS and ext3 carry considerable overhead. Do you really need a journal to recover the filesystem on your digital camera incase it crashes? ext2 would be a much better choice.
Re:because it's standard... (Score:2)
That'd obviously be a bad thing for our recovering economy.
Re:because it's standard... (Score:2)
That would be JFFS (Score:2, Interesting)
You may go the other way: use the ext2 or anything best suited to flash and supply the opensource Windows driver for it.
The Free file system best suited to write-few-read-many memory would probably be JFFS [redhat.com], but Google doesn't know about any efforts to implement a generic JFFS driver on Windows.
its very common (Score:5, Insightful)
So simple in fact, many companies have rolled their own FAT-alikes that are backwards compatible with it and thus likely avoid licensing fees. M-Soft likely sees it as a opportunity to squeeze the last bits out of the old tech... such as "is your FAT system *really* compliant? Why not just buy ours and we guarantee it is!"
I don't see why this is worthy of a story...pretty common business practice out there.
Re:First Post (Score:2)
Re:First Post (Score:3, Insightful)
I was discussing this with my nephew the other day. Basicly because one of the primary reasons that fat was so cool(sic) was the fact that everyone and their neighbor could use it. If you had a mac, amiga, atari-st, or even a word processor, all of them could do fat cause it's what was popular.
Better exists, but FAT was where it's at as far as intraoperability.
I still have alot of stuff on FAT, dispite the fact that I was not using microsoft for a signifigent perio
they're not charging for FAT itself (Score:3, Insightful)
But M-soft did in fact create the standard and spec and if you want to be absolutely sure your FAT implementation is completely standards compliant...you can buy theirs. If you want.
Thats all this is.
Re:they're not charging for FAT itself (Score:4, Insightful)
So while they may be describing this move as fairly harmless, I'm not inclined to be so sure.
i'm not sure of the patent details... (Score:3, Interesting)
And since FAT implementations are nearly ubiquitous today, trying to sue them all would be an exercise in wasting time and the patent would e
Re:i'm not sure of the patent details... (Score:3, Informative)
If you wait 15 years to sue someone after you know about their specific use, yes, you might have some issues in that specific case. That's not to say, however, that you can't still sue someone else who is just starting to use the technology just because you waited on a different party's usage.
The cases are different because in the former you're knowingly allowing them to become depe
Re:they're not charging for FAT itself (Score:2)
Re:they're not charging for FAT itself (Score:2)
FAT support without long filenames may still be useful to embedded device manufacturers, but it's *not* useful to (say) the bulk of folks making interactive use of the vfat driver on Linux.
Re:they're not charging for FAT itself (Score:2)
For other formats, MS license covers "possible patents" MS may have regarding the format.
I'd be somehow surprised if MS didn't have a similar scheme for FAT. After all, it's not like it actually requires a patent to pull off.
Hey, it makes perfect sense... (Score:2)
Re:Hey, it makes perfect sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$250k caps - that's chump change (Score:2)
Laches (Score:4, Informative)
Before anybody chimes in with yet another "patents aren't trademarks and don't have to be defended as vigorously" comment, I'd like to remind readers of the doctrine of laches, which states that a plaintiff who harms the defendant by delaying legal action (such as by submarining a patent for years) may not be able to recover damages for infringements that occurred prior to bringing the lawsuit.
Re:Laches (Score:3, Informative)
Re:$250k caps - that's chump change (Score:2)
MS offers no product that costs mor ethen 250000 dollors. And yet they still sell them all.
It is almost like they would invite another quater of a million dollors of almost pure proffit even if it is little in the scheme of things.
Like when I loan my buddy five bucks I am always pleased to get paid back.
Re:$250k caps - that's chump change (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How was this flamebait? (Score:3, Insightful)
Merry Christmas to all.
more like Digital Camera media (Score:2)
Re:Errr....will it affect Freedos? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Errr....will it affect Freedos? (Score:2)
Even if it does, it appears that as long as they have a clean room reimplementation, they should be fine.
Re:More likely (Score:4, Insightful)
NTFS is not useful for small volumes (less then 1Gb, I don't remember what the minimum NTFS volume size is off-hand). It also can't be used on read-only media (unlike FAT32).
FAT32 handles niches that NTFS simply won't fit into. There's no way that this will bring about 'complete' adoption of NTFS/WinFS. (If anything, it would push another open format such as one of the Linux filesystems or UDF.)
Re:iPods are fat (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MS licensing terms (Score:2)
Re:No big deal (Score:2)
Think about it for one second, would you want to be the guy that has to plug hundreds of thousands of USB keychain devices and format them, 8 hours a day over the course of a year?
In fact, it probably would cost more. to get good production you'd have to have way more th
Re:No big deal (Score:2)
Now we have some new costs involved.
1) you still have to have people to run the machine and maintain it. that's not costly but experianced techs can run up to 100k a year.
2) you will slow the overall process down. why? you have to wait for the machine