Germany declares Microsoft's FAT patent not valid.

[Jan Panteltje]

Germany declares Microsoft's FAT patent not valid.
It was preceded by the Rockridge standard, and also by postings
in comp.unix.bsd.

German article:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/86102

So now a lot of SD and other memory card related manufacturers have
a place to go ?

 

[John Barrett]

Germany declares Microsoft's FAT patent not valid.
It was preceded by the Rockridge standard, and also by postings
in comp.unix.bsd.

German article:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/86102

So now a lot of SD and other memory card related manufacturers have
a place to go ?

Could you possibly find a link to a similar article in english ?? I havent
been able to turn up anything except stuff about US patent reviews.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Could you possibly find a link to a similar article in english ?? I havent
been able to turn up anything except stuff about US patent reviews.

I suggest running it through babelfish online translation service.
As it is a German decision, in a German court, and just made, it will
likely take some time before other countries pick up on this.

 

[Henry Kiefer]

| Could you possibly find a link to a similar article in english ?? I havent
| been able to turn up anything except stuff about US patent reviews.
|

What do you want to know exactly?

- Henry
(native German speaker)

 

[Joerg]

| Could you possibly find a link to a similar article in english ?? I havent
| been able to turn up anything except stuff about US patent reviews.
|

What do you want to know exactly?

- Henry
(native German speaker)

They speak real German in the Frankfurt area?

< ducking for cover... >

 

[JeffM]

Could you possibly find a link to a similar article in english ??

http://news.google.com/news?num=100&q=Germany+German+Microsoft+FAT+patent
yields (oddly enough)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/86141

 

[Henry Kiefer]

| They speak real German in the Frankfurt area?
|
| < ducking for cover... >

At least we have applewoi.

- Henry

 

[Joerg]

| They speak real German in the Frankfurt area?
|
| < ducking for cover... >

At least we have applewoi.

And Federweisser. Boy did I have a hangover after that.

 

[John Barrett]

http://news.google.com/news?num=100&q=Germany+German+Microsoft+FAT+patent
yields (oddly enough)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/86141

Much appreciated There didnt seem to be a link on the german language
version to the english, and my goggling turned up nothing

I really dont see the problem -- most vendors sell their media unformatted
to begin with -- let the end user do that with their already licensed (in
most cases) operating system

Hard blow for linux though -- will have to yank fat32 support out of the
core since MS is being a real ass about what amounts to an obsolete
technology... must be hard up for cash for some reason

And that probably wont stop people from passing around the kernel patch and
putting it right back in those that care anyway -- who moves data around
on floppy any more ?? burn a rewritable CD and have done with it !!

 

[Rich Grise]

Could you possibly find a link to a similar article in english ?? I havent
been able to turn up anything except stuff about US patent reviews.

Won't Wine run Doze apps off an ext3 or reiser FS?

(IOW, who needs MICRO$~1?)

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Richard The Dreaded Libertarian]

On a sunny day (Thu, 01 Mar 2007 22:27:52 GMT) it happened "John Barrett"

I suggest running it through babelfish online translation service. As it
is a German decision, in a German court, and just made, it will likely
take some time before other countries pick up on this.

What ever happened to Germany's indictment of Rumsfeld for war crimes?
Or did he weasel out of that by taking his golden parachute while the
getting's good?

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

Germany declares Microsoft's FAT patent not valid. It was preceded by the
Rockridge standard, and also by postings in comp.unix.bsd.

German article:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/86102

So now a lot of SD and other memory card related manufacturers have a
place to go ?

FAT patent? Linux reads and writes FAT just fine, thank you.

And any patent on anything as old as FAT would have to have expired
by now.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[jasen]

Much appreciated There didnt seem to be a link on the german language
version to the english, and my goggling turned up nothing

I really dont see the problem -- most vendors sell their media unformatted
to begin with -- let the end user do that with their already licensed (in
most cases) operating system

Hard blow for linux though -- will have to yank fat32 support out of the
core since MS is being a real ass about what amounts to an obsolete
technology... must be hard up for cash for some reason

cameras, and the like, use it on their memnory cards.

And that probably wont stop people from passing around the kernel patch and
putting it right back in those that care anyway -- who moves data around
on floppy any more ?? burn a rewritable CD and have done with it !!

floppies etc don't need a FAT format, 99.9% don't use FAT32 (the 0.1% being
LS-120 floppies, and zip drives). regular floppies use FAT-12.

Bye.
Jasen

 

[jasen]

Fat32 and long filename support are Win98 technology -- and apparently what
the patent fight is all about -- still has another 10 years or so to run

FAT32 is just FAT12 with wider integers, there's nothing novel there,
except the 2^24 cluster limit, that's a feature linux doesn't implement,
it'll go all the way to 2^32 clusters AIUI.

VFAT (long filenames) is from win95, if microsoft is going to be awkward
people will switch to something else.

Bye.
Jasen

 

[JeffM]

Hard blow for linux though -- will have to yank fat32 support
out of the core since MS is being a real ass

about what amounts to an obsolete technology

And that probably wont stop people from passing around the kernel patch
and putting it right back in
[...]-- who moves data around on floppy any more ??

floppies etc don't need a FAT format, 99.9% don't use FAT32
(the 0.1% being LS-120 floppies, and zip drives).
regular floppies use FAT-12.

That's PART of the picture; floppies obviously *can* do LFN:
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:Rv57k5MKo7AJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table+zz+VFAT
(The Heise article did a really lousy job on any details.
The LFN thing was a BIG part of M$'s *newness* claim.)

 

[Rich Grise]

FAT32 is just FAT12 with wider integers, there's nothing novel there,
except the 2^24 cluster limit, that's a feature linux doesn't implement,
it'll go all the way to 2^32 clusters AIUI.

VFAT (long filenames) is from win95, if microsoft is going to be awkward
people will switch to something else.

It's (Windoze) also too stupid to complain about filenames with embedded
blanks. I'm finding that a serious issue while I'm trying to organize
a collection of about 9,000 files. (about 11GB.) =:-O

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Rene Tschaggelar]

On Sat, 03 Mar 2007 23:01:01 +0000, jasen wrote:

It's (Windoze) also too stupid to complain about filenames with embedded
blanks. I'm finding that a serious issue while I'm trying to organize
a collection of about 9,000 files. (about 11GB.) =:-O

Rich,
Windows can handle filenames with blanks in it. As a
parameter, the path will have to be enclosed in ""

Rene

 

[Rich Grise]

Rich,
Windows can handle filenames with blanks in it. As a parameter, the path
will have to be enclosed in ""

That's OK - I fixed it:

#!/bin/bash

while export THISONE=`find . -type f -print | grep ' ' | head -1` ; do
export NEWNAME=${THISONE// /_}

#echo "Renaming $THISONE to $NEWNAME..."
mv -v "$THISONE" "$NEWNAME"
done

# ;-)

(it's got the exports because I developed it a line at a time on the
console.)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[joseph2k]

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/86141

Hard blow for linux though -- will have to yank fat32 support
out of the core since MS is being a real ass

about what amounts to an obsolete technology

And that probably wont stop people from passing around the kernel patch
and putting it right back in
[...]-- who moves data around on floppy any more ??

floppies etc don't need a FAT format, 99.9% don't use FAT32
(the 0.1% being LS-120 floppies, and zip drives).
regular floppies use FAT-12.

That's PART of the picture; floppies obviously *can* do LFN:
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:Rv57k5MKo7AJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table+zz+VFAT
(The Heise article did a really lousy job on any details.
The LFN thing was a BIG part of M$'s *newness* claim.)

I bet that if someone wanted to they could break the patent with even older
Novell alternate namespace technology. It has been around since netware 2,
which is before MSWindows 3.0; let alone Windows95 (OSR 2) where LFN was
introduced. Perhaps Unix (TM) supported multiple names in the same
namespace (directory structure) in something like NFS even earlier.

Reminds me, if the PTO compares introduction in commercial use with the
patent application date the patent may be prima fascia invalid. After all
the patent application dates run from 1992 to 1996 (or later).

 

[jasen]

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/86141

Hard blow for linux though -- will have to yank fat32 support
out of the core since MS is being a real ass

about what amounts to an obsolete technology

And that probably wont stop people from passing around the kernel patch
and putting it right back in
[...]-- who moves data around on floppy any more ??

floppies etc don't need a FAT format, 99.9% don't use FAT32
(the 0.1% being LS-120 floppies, and zip drives).
regular floppies use FAT-12.

That's PART of the picture; floppies obviously *can* do LFN:
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:Rv57k5MKo7AJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table+zz+VFAT
(The Heise article did a really lousy job on any details.
The LFN thing was a BIG part of M$'s *newness* claim.)

I suppose that's one way to promote UDF

Bye.
Jasen