On Wed Dec 10, 2003 at 11:27:17 +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
><quote who="Kevin Waterson">
>
>> MS is set to begin charging a license fee for FAT file system
>
>(Uh oh, anti-MS ranty pants thread...)
>
>They're charging a license fee for THEIR CODE, on top of the statement that
>there are patents related to the FAT filesystem. These include the long file
>name mapping method, which has fairly obvious and clever prior art (UMSDOS)
>in our operating system of choice.
>
>So, when embedded developers are using BSD or Linux code on their devices
>already (or using very simple FAT12ish filesystems), and may not have any
>inclination to care about Microsoft's lame patents ("So why pay MS at
>all?"), this whole thing will most likely be a flash in the pan. Imagine if
>MS decided to take Sony to court over it. That would be amusing.
And of course the patents only cover the long filename stuff, and most cameras
I've used only do 8.3 *anyway*.
Benno
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