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Microsoft Software Linux

Microsoft FAT Licensing Plan - No Big Deal? 235

Posted by simoniker from the slimming-look dept.
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."
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Microsoft FAT Licensing Plan - No Big Deal? More

Microsoft FAT Licensing Plan - No Big Deal?

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  • ...Patent Issue (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Ieshan ( 409693 )
    The point has to be securing the patent. If they charge people to license something, they're establishing the fact that they do "own" this technology.

    • Re:...Patent Issue (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cduffy ( 652 )
      Why?

      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)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @01:23AM (#7806914)
      Not needed... you're confusing that with the requirement that an owner must defend a trademark or lose it. Non-enforcement doesn't invalidate a patent, only prior works can do that.

      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)

        by kfg ( 145172 )
        This license is for FAT, not FAT32 which is a different format covered by different patents.

        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)

          by Pius II. ( 525191 ) <lees_biology_0p.icloud@com> on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:47AM (#7807774)
          Actually, the patent is not for the DOS-style fat, but for the vfat extensions, namely the way long file names are stored.
          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.
          • > Actually, the patent is not for the DOS-style fat, but for the vfat extensions, namely the way long file names are stored.

            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)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @03:03AM (#7807145)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:...I Spoke to them (Score:3, Insightful)

        by imroy ( 755 )

        I had a conversation with one of their licensing officers [...] 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..

        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)

          by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @10:23AM (#7808041)
          If you prefer, look at it this way - perhaps MS realise how much of a mess they've made of implementing certain things in the past, and so recognise that if they can mess it up, so can anyone else. That may be part of the reason why - acknowledging that they're nothing special when it comes to writing software.

          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?

      • 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)

    by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @01:02AM (#7806833) Homepage
    This isn't about making money, and it isn't about protecting a patent. This is simply an exercise for the benefit of the courts: Microsoft will be holding FAT (along with lots of other things) up as examples of how they're making their standards available to the competition.

    • Re:This isn't about patents... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @01:13AM (#7806871) Homepage Journal
      This is exactly right.

      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 /. posted the first story crying about how MS was going to charge for fat I saw a nes article about how MS was becoming more open and letting loose fat for everyone to use.
    • It's also protection from anybody claiming this is a "stealth patent" because they're stepping up nice and early and saying if you want to format things as FAT32, pay up. You can't truely hide a patent (it's on file at the USPTO) and allowing it to go into widespread use and then setting a high price is perfectly legal, it's just a slimeball tactic, and one that is likely to result in your standard being thrown out the window on contact. Microsoft is basically insuring that FAT32 becomes the standard for

    • Re:This isn't about patents... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They heard that if they didn't protect it Darl was going to claim it.

  • Microsoft licensing program (Score:5, Informative)

    by metalpet ( 557056 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @01:09AM (#7806861) Journal

    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.

    • I have the sneaky feeling the terms of those licenses preclude GPL products from using protocols or file formats covered by them

      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)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • MS are charging companies that use their implementation of the technology in order to ship pre-formatted media. They are not going after anyone who's implemented their own FAT-compatible system.

          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)

    by rebelcool ( 247749 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @01:18AM (#7806896)
    For those of you too lazy or of poor reading comprehension skills...

    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)

      by jizmonkey ( 594430 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @01:58AM (#7807004)
      Appendix C (pages 6 through 18) of the DOS 1.1 manual gave bit-level instructions on how to write and read FAT. Obviously, this was just FAT12 instead of FAT16 or FAT32, but it's never been the case that you needed to "reverse engineer" FAT to write an implementation. The specs have always been freely available.

      I agree with your statement that the canonical implementation has some value, though.

      • Re:Reverse engineered specs not necessary (Score:4, Informative)

        by ls -lR ( 703136 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @03:14AM (#7807168)
        If you'd RTFA you'd know that the patents and the licensing only applies to the VFAT extensions to the filesystem which were created for Windows 95 to support long filenames in a backwards-compatible way. So the specifications for the basic FAT filesystem are not relevant to the discussion, no one is trying to license that.
        • If you would read the original article [microsoft.com] more carefully you would see that Microsoft is licensing *patents* relating to FAT/VFAT as well as canonical source code and *test* code. What I said still stands. There is no need to reverse engineer anything because all of the technology was publicly disclosed in the patents and other freely available documents. The way patents work is that you need to disclose any technology that you claim.

          On another matter (because I strive not to merely regurgitate articles for k

    • Re:Lets clear away some myths and FUD (Score:4, Informative)

      by Srin Tuar ( 147269 ) <zeroday26@yahoo.com> on Thursday December 25, 2003 @02:18AM (#7807041)
      Actually, I was under the impression they were only charging for the technique of putting long filenames into legacy FAT filesystems, being as that is all they have patents on...

    • Re:Lets clear away some myths and FUD (Score:5, Funny)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @02:25AM (#7807055) Homepage Journal
      "And thats all this is about. Really, honestly, a non-issue."

      Yeah.. well. still, I'm sharpening my pitchfork anyway.

    • Re:Lets clear away some myths and FUD (Score:5, Informative)

      by calidoscope ( 312571 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @03:02AM (#7807140)
      FAT is an old time file system created in the days of DOS.

      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.

    • Also, aren't there other LFN-enabled filesystems that could be used (and read/written to by various interpretive utils, if it needs to interact with a VFAT system) if one declines to pay their license fee? Which itself struck me as reasonable in terms of business expenses, especially with the cap. If you're selling a few million flash memory cards, and *everyone* making such cards has to add the same few cents apiece in extra cost for the license, well, that's not going to impact anyone's competitiveness ev
    • 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?

      They're selling an implementation?

  • The only one getting FAT... (Score:3, Funny)

    by patricksevenlee ( 679708 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @01:20AM (#7806903)
    ...is Bill Gates.

    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

  • We are only accessing FAT32 file systems, not using them.
    Not true. Let's say I'm running Suse on an ext2 hard drive. I could always throw FAT32 on another hard drive and use it for storage in Linux.

  • Portly64 (Score:3, Funny)

    by CmdrTostado ( 653672 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @01:31AM (#7806949) Journal
    I am offering a direct replacement for FAT32. Fat is so .. demeaning and 32 is so .. yesterday. I am liscensing Portly64 to anyone who needs a break from the 1/4 million M$ fees, only 1/8 million.
  • Here are a few benefits on face value...

    - 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,
    • ISO-9660 also has some severe limitations on the max tree depth and max length of a complete tree name. It's not much of a problem for cameras but for MP3 players it could be if you want to do things like genre->artist->period->album->title or other variations thereof. I know because I wrote my own little frontend program for a TMBG compilation MP3 cd and I had to rename some of the files because the max characters was exceeded. I also had a backup fail because I had too deap of a tree.

  • this could be a bad move (Score:4, Insightful)

    by strider3700 ( 109874 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @02:12AM (#7807032)
    Reading the other comments I'm seeing that this is being considered as a move to protect the patent. Thats probably true.

    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.

  • I love the wording! (Score:5, Funny)

    by wackybrit ( 321117 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @02:24AM (#7807053) Homepage Journal
    We are only accessing FAT32 file systems, not using them.

    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!"
  • The filesystem world has got to be one of the most unorganized place. So unorganized I don't know how lawyers even want to deal with it.

    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)

    by gooman ( 709147 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @03:46AM (#7807236) Journal
    M$ Marketing person reads in the morning paper that America is becoming increasingly obese.
    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)

    by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <tomstdenis.gmail@com> on Thursday December 25, 2003 @05:01AM (#7807359) Homepage
    IANAABIDUG [I am not an artist but I do use Gimp]

    http://iahu.ca:8080/finished.png ;-)

    Merry Holidays!

    Tom

  • What's going on (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @06:19AM (#7807518) Homepage
    MS is trying to reduce the number of MP3 players that expose an easy to use file system interface rather than whatever DRM-of-the-day system is popular. MP3 players are becoming an _exceedingly_ low margin, high volume business, and MS is trying to make it more expensive to give people what they want ("just plug your device in and it works").

    If it wasn't a big deal, there wouldn't be a quiet but forceful attempt to invalidate the patents going on.

  • No big deal at all !!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Crypto Gnome ( 651401 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @07:02AM (#7807577) Homepage Journal
    Especially if you actually read the Microsoft technical pages on this issue.

    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)

    by Elektroschock ( 659467 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @07:05AM (#7807581)
    FAt is patented. This example shows how important the interoperability privilegue was that FFII got into the EU Parl proposal of the software patents directive. http://swpat.ffii.org

  • Who cares? (Score:2, Informative)

    by utlemming ( 654269 )
    In a case where someone really does have the rights, who cares? I mean, it is there property, and just because they want to collect on it, is there right. Now if it was SCO, then I could see some room for complaint. But if the disk makers decide to move to some other format, that is fine. But in my mind, I don't see the big issue.
  • A decent technical overview of the FAT filesystem can be found here:
    http://home.freeuk.net/foxy2k/disk/disk1.htm [freeuk.net]

  • Patent Test Bed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @11:44AM (#7808323) Homepage Journal
    I think this was more of a test bed to see if they could pull out an old stealth patent and make it fly.

    If this works, plan to see more in the future, with wide ranging consequences...
  • that Microsoft is not forthcoming with an English explaination of whatever the hell this is - and seems to be perfectly content in everyone wrangling and wondering just what the hell all the lawyer-speak on their FAT licensing page is.

    (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)

    by LionKuntz ( 735585 ) on Friday December 26, 2003 @01:28AM (#7811307)
    Patents are invalid (no good) if they claim invention of anything which is public domain or was already invented. "Prior Art" is the term for "not new" used by the patent office.

    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.

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