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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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| RE[3]: Comment by marcp |
| By Morgan on 2012-09-19 14:33:05 |
| I thought journaling file systems were bad for flash devices though? That's why I was suggesting simple non-journaling file systems. I'm not a file system expert by any means though. :) |
 - Score: 4 |
| RE[2]: Where is the EU? |
| By Bill Shooter of Bul on 2012-09-19 14:47:15 |
|
Yes, I understand that more now than when I posted. Except that its really ill gotten gains. People need to use their technology because of their monopoly. The real question is how long they should suffer for their past crimes. I think 20 years is good, so I'd continue punishing them for another ten. Maybe require them to support a BSD lichened file system as an alternative to their own. Speaking thereof, what woudl be a good open source alternative to exFat? One that has good properties for usb thumb drives and sd cards? |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[4]: Comment by ilovebeer |
| By Neolander on 2012-09-19 14:48:21 |
|
> 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 IIRC, it's not even long filename support that is patented, but simultaneous support of long and short filenames. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[4]: Comment by marcp |
| By Neolander on 2012-09-19 15:29:25 |
|
> I thought journaling file systems were bad for flash devices though? That's why I was suggesting simple non-journaling file systems. I'm not a file system expert by any means though. :) I think the "journaling is bad for flash devices" part depends on one's priorities when it comes to mass storage. Personally, journaling has brought me so much benefits in terms of convenience and reliability in the past that I wouldn't want to live without it, no matter what the underlying hardware is. After all, if modern flash drives couldn't handle journaling, they likely wouldn't survive constant writes to small user files either, which is exactly what many modern OSs do. The optimizations that are used for one, can likely be used for the other too. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[2]: Protection Money Really? |
| By lucas_maximus on 2012-09-19 16:34:26 |
|
I work in the Gambling Sector and it pretty much boils down like that. I think personally people forget or just don't know how a project works in business, a budget is assigned based on the requirements and cost estimates. If exFAT support wasn't needed or out of budget RIM, they would have just supported FAT32. Also people forget if a department doesn't spend it Budget it loses it. Edited 2012-09-19 16:40 UTC |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[4]: Metadata |
| By lucas_maximus on 2012-09-19 16:45:30 |
|
Because FAT is already good enough. FAT32 is still fine for the majority of applications, exFAT can supports silly file sizes. I suggest you read the unix haters handbook, the principle is called "worse is better". I haven't worried about what filesystem I should choose since I last tried a Gentoo Install, or when Ext4 would forget to actually put the file onto the disk. Edited 2012-09-19 16:47 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[4]: Comment by ilovebeer |
| By kovacm on 2012-09-19 17:18:06 |
|
FAT32? Patents worth MILLIONS of dollars?? yeah, right... It was overturned partly on the basis of 20-year old Usenet posts Linus Tordvals and an anonymous Atari hacker made when someone asked how to implement long filenames. The ideas they sketched up off the top of their heads was what FAT32 did. i.e. It was obvious to someone skilled in the field. journal articles on subject: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterp... and source from 1992.: https://groups.google.com/forum/?... https://groups.google.com/forum/?... |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[4]: Comment by marcp |
| By libray on 2012-09-19 17:25:30 |
|
The journal is not the problem. The problem with the default mount options for ext2,3 and 4 are asynchronous writes in the name of speed. Mount all those disks with sync if you want safer. This is all divergent from the article though. RIM, All Android makers, camera makers, and pretty much any device that reads an SD card must support FAT to interop. |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[4]: Metadata |
| By Alfman on 2012-09-19 17:31:08 |
|
Lobotomik, "How about one of the filing systems supported by OSX, like UFS? It is a powerful filing system, with source code available under a BSD license, and compatible out of the box with Macs. It would get along fine with the Linux and iOS kernels that make up 95% of the smartphone market, and a huge slice of the HD-Tv market, the set-top box market and the embedded market in general." It's good that we're finally starting to think about alternatives to the FAT lock in. Someone else may be able to highlight whether UFS could be suitable or not, since I have no experience with it. However there is a potentially large problem with your logic: just because "linux" supports UFS doesn't mean it's ok to extrapolate that 95% of the smartphone market, embedded market, etc can already support it. These would likely need to be re-flashed to get the driver, they might not have sufficient resources for a new driver. Even if the stock kernel did include UFS, there still could be issues with the user-space tools on these embededed devices. My own linux desktop distro doesn't even have ufsutils installed (mkfs.ufs, fsck.ufs, etc). It's doubtful that any UFS combination has ever been tested on most embedded devices. Not to discourage progress, but I think switching file systems is going to be to be an interoperability mess. The safest way to transition would be to start explicitly supporting another file system today and keeping FAT as the default. In a few years time when the alternative FS is widely supported, then it should become the default. But how do we get all manufacturers on board with this plan? It almost takes a monopoly to get the ball moving. |
| - Score: 3 |
| How silly Thom! |
| By jefro on 2012-09-19 19:34:23 |
|
It is not protection. RIM for some reason needed to have extra code and full use of exfat for their product or series of products. So why not pay for what you need? That isn't against civil ways to live. Do you pay protection money to your government when you pay taxes. Well, maybe but you also get services like fire and police and sewers and laws. Same here. They claim to have paid for a broad range of technology, not just the right to use a filesystem. |
| - Score: 1 |
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