On January 11, 2006 07:33 pm, Jarrod Major wrote: > In case you haven't read it yet, The Reg posted this article today: > > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/11/microsoft_wins_patent_case/ > > "Microsoft wins FAT patent case" > > I'm not sure how this will play out. Do we have anyone in the group who > knows what this article is referring to exactly? My first interpretation > was FAT filesystem; to which I figured "big deal, we have EXT2 and 3, > Rieser and others". I was thinking that okay if we can't deal with > FAT16/32, NTFS or whatever MS filesystem is out there that it would be > inconvenient but not disastrous. Hell even USB keydrives and their ilk use > some variation of these filesystems. That's not to say they couldn't be > reformatted to something Linux-friendly but then they would be unreadable > in a Windows system. > > The more I thought about it, I am not sure it has completely to do with > filesystem at all but rather the way that files are written to a particular > media hence the name File Allocation Table. Perhaps every filesystem uses > FAT. I don't know, can anyone clarify? > > If this is the case then we could be in very big trouble. I'm sure we could > come up with something but it would require some friendly ties with storage > hardware vendors. Nope, I don't like not knowing how much this could affect > you and me. > > This could be one of those nasty things that MS's nasty FUDslingers (TM) > could have a day with. I'd like facts please. Of course I am not a lawyer either - but the way I understand it is that devices that include code that implements access to the FAT file systems will be targeted, ie cameras, music players etc. Flash drives are ok becuase they have not any software embedded in them. On the article on slashdot one of the persons posting to the article has a link to the Microsoft link that describes who needs to pay royalties.
I can see the effect on the kernel may be that support for FAT file systems may have to be pulled. _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
