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| RIM to pay Microsoft protection money for exFAT patents |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-09-18 21:45:37 |
| Microsoft and RIM have announced that RIM has licensed Redmond's exFAT patents. The press release contains a ridiculous amount of hyperbole nonsense, and if you translate it into regular people speak, it basically comes down to RIM paying Microsoft protection money for stupid nonsensical software patents. Ridiculous articles like like this make it seem as if we're talking about patents on major technological breakthroughs, but don't be fooled: this is because for some inexplicable reason, we're using crappy FAT for SD cards. |
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| Nothing wrong with this |
| By vaette on 2012-09-19 08:11:12 |
|
See, this I don't mind all that much. exFAT is a real specification designed entirely by Microsoft in recent times (first released 2006). I am not the least bit surprised that Microsoft has non-trivial intellectual property in it. On the other side, RIM is not paying up because they are using some trivial technique that happens to fall under a software patent, they are paying up because they are specifically implementing exFAT exactly as specified by Microsoft. The only iffy part is that exFAT is so attached to a hardware standard in turn, but that does not seem to be the part people complain about. I do think that the patent system needs to be reformed and reconsidered, but this is clearly not "paying Microsoft protection money", this is paying for the right to use a rather complete product that Microsoft designed. |
 - Score: 4 |
| RE[2]: Comment by ilovebeer |
| By phoudoin on 2012-09-19 08:15:29 |
|
> The problem isn't the FAT file system. The problem is that Microsoft refuses to support any free file system which could be used. As such, they are leveraging their monopoly in the desktop market to affect another. So true. But their monopoly in the desktop market matters less than it used to. Today, all major mobile OSes but Windows Phone are perfectly able to support free file systems out of box, making formatting your SD card in FAT less mandatory, except if you often move your SD card out of your phone to your desktop or you pro camera. And this put Windows Phone in an unique position: being the late competitor, users wanting to switch to Windows Phone may ask more and more to be able to keep their SD card content from their current Android or iOS mobile device without having to reformat first them into exFAT, possibly forcing MS to actually support at least one free file system like ext2/3/4. May I was Google, I'll push to format by default any new SD card inserted in an Android device to a free file system. Could be a good marketing operation too: see, we don't use patented/proprietary technology that could trap your private data. > That is grounds for anti trust actions. The easy and obvious way to avoid this would be for them to implement ext2/3/4. But then they wouldn't be able to sue over it. Or the open source community to implement it for Windows plateforms. Someone will first have to cover the Windows FS kit cost, though. An alternative could be to keep FAT32, but store only two files on it: a set of 4Gb "block" files hosting a guest free file system in it, and one single file, relying on auto-run feature: a free Windows tool to manage the guest file system within block files. Like the ZeroCD trick used by USB devices these days to embebded their drivers, but for file system. Zero-FAT, or FAT-free, isn't that cool names for a technology!? ;-) Edited 2012-09-19 08:23 UTC |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[3]: Comment by ilovebeer |
| By smashIt on 2012-09-19 10:02:47 |
|
FAT at least up to FAT32 is patentfree long filenames are patented, but you don't need to support them in fact i haven't seen a single camera that uses something different than 8.3 naming |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[3]: Metadata |
| By JAlexoid on 2012-09-19 10:09:25 |
| Actually Microsoft "was selected" by the SD Assiciation to make the exFat as the mandatory standard for SDXC. |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[3]: Where is the EU? |
| By JAlexoid on 2012-09-19 10:12:32 |
| Luckily for Microsoft SD Card Assiciation has no FRAND requirements. |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[5]: Where is the EU? |
| By saso on 2012-09-19 10:41:24 |
|
> Paying royalties in order to have interoperability is perfectly fine and the EU will not do anything about that. I know and I object to that. It stifles innovation in open-source which is forced to either pay up (using money they don't have) or remain forever unable to compete. I'd be calmer if only the inventions really were patent-worthy, but a patent on some primitive algorithm for 8.3 name handling is just ludicrous... > The EU would only intervene if Microsoft wouldn't want to license exFAT to others, or if the royalties were way too high. I know, that's why I said "FRAND nonsense patents". > Remember, this is the same EU which has been trying to approve software patents for years. That's the European Commission, not the "EU" and not the European Parliament. The EC is a body of appointed bureaucrats that aren't directly responsible to the electorate, so it's quite obvious they are the first go-to place for corrupting interests. |
| - Score: 3 |
| Stamp Tax |
| By Snial on 2012-09-19 11:55:31 |
|
Not wanting to put too much of a fine point on it, but exFAT licensing is really a modern form of a Stamp Tax[*]. The requirement that removable media like SD cards use exFat means we essentially have to pay Microsoft for every document we produce and as such is an infringement on free-speech. Thus if you use a mobile device whose media is exFAT formatted, then you owe MS for the right to take photos or read documents or view web-pages (since the data will usually be cached on the media). The real impact is not the direct cost to end customers, but those who wish to make use of solid-state media, such as independent developers (e.g. the maker community). Since SD cards are being phased out and there can be no legal open-source SDHD file-based drivers, amateurs (i.e. the general public) will be locked out of hardware development that involves physical interoperable data transfer. Consider FIGnition: http://www.fignition.co.uk , the DIY 8-bit computer. It uses an SPI flash chip for storage, but there's no real option for it to support SDHD cards; even though SDHD, I believe, like SD, supports an SPI access mode. But if I were to design another product where large storage capacities were important, I can build the hardware which utilizes SDHD, but I would not be permitted to, unless I pay Microsoft. Thus, it represents an infringement on free-speech. Of course, I could, say use alternative technology: SPI chips with my own driver or SDHDs formatted with a different file system (thus incurring only the manufacturer's MS tax) and then use USB for data transfer, but the same problem applies there: USB requires device and vendor IDs which must be licensed, an attack on free-speech at that level. I haven't investigated the implications of WLAN or BT, but direct Ethernet Cabling I think would still be a possibility since it's possible to buy Ethernet chips that amateurs can build with (i.e. DIP-based). Modern options are now rather limited, by decree, rather than by capability. The key thing is that it's an infringement on free speech at a number of levels, one of which is on users; on people who produce technology; moreover it's a global infringement by a business where we have no representation. As such it's a direct violation of the UN declaration of human rights Article 19: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." -cheers from julz [*] For those of us who don't know what that means, the 1765 'Stamp Tax' law referred to a British Government Stamped Mark which had to be placed on every official document in the colonies and which was charged for. |
| - Score: -1 |
| Re: |
| By kurkosdr on 2012-09-19 12:00:40 |
|
Sorry, but this is open source paying for it's sins. If the open source folks had the smarts to replace the broken X.org in their OSes (be it Linux, PC-BSD or OpenIndiana) and made their OSes usable*, Windows wouldn't have 90+% marketshare, and Microsoft wouldn't have the power to essentially mandate exFAT for SDXC cards (exFAT and NTFS are the only filsystems supported by Windows that allow files larger than 4GB). But with open source OSes being under 1%, if Microsoft wants to crush ext3 and other royalty-free filesystems, they have all the power to do it. And if you think I am trolling, I really don't care... *=and by "usable" I mean not breaking compatibility with existing apps every now and then and not breaking upgrades |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE: Where is the EU? |
| By kurkosdr on 2012-09-19 12:03:52 |
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I don't understand why the EU hasn't raised a stink about this anticompetitive behaviour. We are using stinky FAT on our sd cards because MS scammed its way into a monopoly and then F'd everyone else over to get its technological underpinnings adopted as necessary standards for interoperability." Because MS licenses their FAT and exFAT patents under "FRAND" (for EU countries that have softpatents), much like MPEG LA licenses their stuff under "FRAND", so all is well. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[4]: Metadata |
| By moondevil on 2012-09-19 12:17:51 |
|
> There is no reason for a Linux-based device to enforce the use of such an old non-native DOS file system, and it's crazy that a piece of Microsoft hardware running a modified Windows NT kernel (the Xbox 360) requires FAT32 and will not operate with NTFS. Interoperability? Which other filesystem do you know that is so universally accepted by most devices as FAT and its successors? |
| - Score: 4 |
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