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Date:	Sat, 6 Dec 2003 12:16:56 PST8
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: M$ is willing to let others use FAT file system for a "reasonable" fee.

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Steven Levine wrote:
>
> One always wonders what triggered [the FAT licensing]
> page to be created. One could guess it's a response to
> MS's recent problems wrt the browser plug-in patents.

I'm not familiar with the browser plug-in patents. Did someone find
"prior art"?

> All that remains now is to see how proactive
> Microsoft is in going after anyone that implements
> FAT32 compatible FSs for other platforms.

I suspect they're still trying to cut Linux off at its knees. It's
possible they'll also go after any 3rd-party FAT32 OS/2 driver.

It's also possible that Microsoft is planning some FAT32 extensions
(meaning "make the next FAT32 incompatible with the current FAT32") and
they don't want new drivers popping up for other platforms.

I never had the time to compare the common files systems. Someone told
me once that you can fork a file under Unix but I don't understand the
concept (I understand forking a process, but a file?). I _do_ know that
long file names have lots of different maximum lengths so it's not a
good idea to use "really long file names" if you might want to move the
files to a different file system some day. Maybe we should patent the
method of compressing a long file name so it's shorter and will fit
within another file system's shorter name field. We could call it
FAT31.

> One this is for sure, it seems that these days one
> can patent almost anything if one is willing to
> spend the money on the paperwork. IBM has a patent
> on outputting error messages in HTML format.

Patents are expensive. My patent attorney told me that a lot of
corporate patent applications are dropped if the idea isn't licensed by
others in the first year or two since if that happens the patent
probably won't be profitable. And I'm sure there's a clause in the
licensing agreements that says if the patent application is not
successful or if is eventually voided due to "prior art" then the patent
holder still gets to keep all the licensing fees.

IBM has a patent on HTML formatted error messages? Cute. I did get a
kick out of an IBM patent I read a few years ago which was for setting
or clearing a bit to indicate whether or not the kernel had done
something.

- Peter

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