Microsoft Issues FAT Tax - Time to Diet!

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.dpreview.com/news/0312/03120403microsoftisfat.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.dpreview.com/news/0312/0...rosoftisfat.asp</a><br /><br /></div>I found this over at dpreview, and it impact all of us who use Flash memory cards in our Pocket PCs and Smartphones:<br /><br />"Microsoft will soon be charging manufacturers of flash memory card devices and those which use them $0.25 per unit or up to $250,000 to use the FAT filesystem. For those who are unaware the FAT file system was developed by Microsoft back in 1976 and has become the standard file system for all digital still cameras. Microsoft owns patents to the FAT File System but for many years hasn't even hinted that it may one day decide to charge for it. These new licenses appear to come into effect immediately and specifically make mention of 'compact flash memory cards' and 'portable digital still cameras'. What a great way for Microsoft to cash in on the most popular consumer products (as if they don't make enough money already)."<br /><br />Phil Askey notes that the solution might be as simple as not formatting the cards before sending them - I wonder if that would work? I also wonder about FAT32 - does Microsoft have the same type of patents on that format? Ultimately, I think this is ridiculous and will only serve to make Flash memory more expensive for the end-user. I hope Sandisk and the other Flash memory makers find a way to get around this - I never approve of companies making money in this fashion (through lawyers and old patents rather than through innovation). You can read the official Microsoft statement <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/tech/fat.asp">at their site.</a> Bleh. :|

[Jonathan1]

This isn't all that unexpected after reading:
Microsoft opens technology to more licensing (http://news.com.com/2100-1012-5113033.html)

I would have expected MS to be a little slack on how they go about doing this though. :? But if its true that the next real update of Windows is 2005-2006 you can bet your wallet they will try and squeeze every dime they can from other revenue sources until that time.

PS- And its not like this is going to just effect flash cards. There are a whole heck of alot of products that take advantage of FAT. How about all those MP3 players out there? iPod? The new Dell Jukebox. Those memory sticks you plug into your system to move files from A to B. Floppy disks. Zip disks. The list is endless. :(

[jfreiman]

In this case, I think it is fine for MS to charge for the FAT file system.

Kodak and other cameras are NOT using a MS Operating System and are using some other manufactures OS - with that in mind MS should be compensated for their technology.

[huangzhinong]

Looks like nothing wrong to charge for FAT system. But it is not so friendly at all.

[Jonathan1]

In this case, I think it is fine for MS to charge for the FAT file system.
Kodak and other cameras are NOT using a MS Operating System and are using some other manufactures OS - with that in mind MS should be compensated for their technology.

Not after this amount of time. I really believe a companies right to "cash in" on a patent should expire after a certain amount of time. This is very similar to all these patent lawsuits we've seen recently trying to claim that some widespread tech is theirs to own. When the tech has been around for decades. This is no different.
Microsoft saw that a whole market revolves around something that they've been giving away for free for almost a quarter of a century and said lets cash in.
If Microsoft was going to charge for this they should have done it back in the 80’s but if they had charged for FAT back then you’d wouldn’t see its proliferation today. You’ve either have a few different types sitting out there or one open source one. Everyone used FAT because, simply, it was Free. Makes me question some of the other currently free patents MS is giving away will remain free. Isn’t Windows Media 9 codec free?,

[dh]

I don't see a problem with this. If the patents for the FAT technology belong to Microsoft and are valid why should they give the technology away?

Twenty five cents is not going to kill the market for memory products. At least they don't seem to be asking for payments for all the units already shipped.

[Andy Sjostrom]

Looks clearly like Microsoft has been giving away technology for free... Good thing they are not going after done deals. I think it is in order to license FAT, their property, and the level quite relevant, IMO.

[Craig Horlacher]

Next they'll charge a fee for every document created in the Word ".doc" format. There's no differance. Nobody has ever charged for storing things in a format they created. You've had to buy products to create a specific format but I can't think of any time where a company actually charged for each time something was produced in that format.

[dean_shan]

They aren't asking for much money at all. Plus they own the FAT they can charge if they want.

[Ed Hansberry]

This could turn out to be pretty hysterical.
A license for manufacturers of certain consumer electronics devices. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit for each of the following types of devices that use removable solid state media to store data: portable digital still cameras; portable digital video cameras; portable digital still/video cameras; portable digital audio players; portable digital video players; portable digital audio/video players; multifunction printers; electronic photo frames; electronic musical instruments; and standard televisions. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per licensee. Pricing for other device types can be negotiated with Microsoft.
Ok, stay with me. Earlier the article (http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/tech/fat.asp) said (emphasis mine) The FAT file system is now supported by a wide variety of operating systems running on all sizes of computers, from servers to personal digital assistants. In addition, many digital devices such as still and video cameras, audio recorders, video game systems, scanners, and printers make use of FAT file system technology.
So, PalmOne, Sony and other PalmSource partners are going to have to contact MS to negotiate licensing fees for use of the FAT file system in their storage cards. Throw Nokia in there too as my 3650 uses a MMC FAT formatted card to store images on. Then add Sharp and other Linux PDA vendors.. :rotfl: This stuff is just too funny.

[quidproquo]

OK....so an SD card costs .25 cents more...... that is no big deal. :roll:

And at least they cap it at $250,000 per manufacturer so they are not trying to put people out of business. (at least the hardware manufacturers, not so lucky for software companies like Sun and Apple)
I think they waited until the usage of the FAT system was ubiquitous (to use their word in their article) or basically omnipresent in just about every piece of technology..... and then dropped the news of a price point.... because if they did it on the front end of this technoolgy wave.... (long ago in the early 80's) they may have steered some innovation away from their product/brain child.

Anyway, they have the right as they have the patent.... at least they seem to be reasonable about the charge and capping it.

On a thinly related side note.....I watched the most recent Terminator movie the other night...... and this move by Microsoft, along with them dominating almost the entire PC market, software, etc. makes me think maybe they should change their name to SkyNet (the system that took over and destroyed the world in the Terminator Trilogy) Micro$oft is EVERYWHERE! :armed:

[ombu]

Yep, I would prefer everything for free.

Looking here and there I still wonder how did MS make all that bunch of cash. Ooops, I can see now, they're a company standing for profit, not a charity, :? my thoughts!!!

As long as it's legal, MS has the right and you can bet they'll cash with everything they can, giving things for free in a first stage is a known competitor-killer, charging after a while for a standard is a cash-machine.

Did MS something wrong in the past? Let justice decide.

Does anyone think laws and rules should be rewritten because this isn't the way it should be? Call your congress man.

Hmmm, you don't find the solution, OK, try to find a new file system for flash cards (Sony's memory stink i.e.) or someone to write the code for free and call it "THIN" so you can be sure it will bother MS, at least for the name I mean. :mrgreen:

OK, here's the final one, don't use a MS product ever, even if it means you've got to move to the moon (be sure the ship you use to get there doesn't have a MS product running within it's systems).

But this is the way things are and we have to live with it, after all it's not so bad, is it?

[guinness]

I don't see what the big deal is, some day they'll probably use NTFS on flash memory and MS will charge companies to use that too. If companies don't like it they can always try and push for an open standard and create all sorts of backwards compatibility problems with older devices. Sony and Olympus screwed users over with the older Memory Sticks and Smartmedia, promising larger memory sizes, never to deliver but it hasn't stopped people from buying their current cameras.

[UberGeek]

Throw Nokia in there too as my 3650 uses a MMC FAT formatted card to store images on. Then add Sharp and other Linux PDA vendors.. :rotfl: This stuff is just too funny.

Actually the Linux based PDAs don't need to use FAT.
They can read cards formated with FAT, but they use CRAMFS internally.
Additionally there are several other file systems a Linux PDA can use.
Personally I use ext2 on my SD and CF cards in my Zaurus.
Perhaps this will push device makers to adopt more 'friendly' OSS filesystems.
Palm and Symbian could also adopt thier own filesystems.
The only reason to currently use the less efficient FAT filesystem (on a flash device it causes too many rewites to one 'cell' of the device) is for Windows compatability.
Mac, Linux and even Windows could easily use these other filesystems via drivers (we dont use FAT for CD or DVDs yet they work fine).

But no matter what happens, a company which starts licensing a technology that has been free for 20+ years
is about a low and sleazy as a company can get.

[Jason Dunn]

I think they waited until the usage of the FAT system was ubiquitous (to use their word in their article) or basically omnipresent in just about every piece of technology..... and then dropped the news of a price point....

That's really what bugs me. Yes, it's their technology and they have a right to it. But they should have been charging for it UP FRONT rather than letting everyone think it was free for over a decade, THEN saying "Oh by the way, we want money for it." Someone else already mentioned this, but what's next? Charging for DOC formats? The mouse cursor? The green start button?

Look, most of the technology industry hates and fears Microsoft, and it's things like this that cause that. If they wanted to build some good will in the technology industry, they should have publicly announced that they were relinquishing the patents or something.

[Janak Parekh]

That's really what bugs me. Yes, it's their technology and they have a right to it. But they should have been charging for it UP FRONT rather than letting everyone think it was free for over a decade, THEN saying "Oh by the way, we want money for it."
Exactly.

Worse is the fact that this move may fragment disk formats in the storage-card market. Imagine not only having to worry about flash card type (e.g., SD, CF, MS, xD, SM, MMC) but also file format (VFAT, FAT32, NTFS, ext2, XFS, who knows what)?

Not only is it a lousy PR move, but it's ultimately going to hurt consumers in several ways, IMHO. They're certainly within their rights to do it, but what are they ultimately gaining?

--janak

[toxostoma]

Next they'll charge a fee for every document created in the Word ".doc" format.

They already do. It's called "upgrade to the latest version of Office to read your .doc files because we won't support your older versions, or else you risk security holes, etc." Sometimes they have worthwhile features, but do you realize that most of what you're paying for is bug fixes? Your paying for upgrades to fix problems that should have been fixed in the first place...

[toxostoma]

They're certainly within their rights to do it, but what are they ultimately gaining?

Up to $250,000 per licensee.

Right now, I think we still desperately need better and cheaper flash memory. The stuff is still so expensive. I don't see this licensing fee as going to drop prices... If the companies just pass off a $.25 fee to the consumer, perhaps it won't be a problem.

[Mandrake]

Just a thought, but how does this affect the rest of the world? For example, I thought software couldn't be patented in Europe.

[Janak Parekh]

Up to $250,000 per licensee.
Don't forget the portable device manufacturers. There's where I fear future fragmentation. Maybe Apple will, for example, just ditch the FAT support in the iPod and only offer HFS/HFS+ units. That would be a substantial loss to me.

--janak

[toxostoma]

I agree completely Janak. If they fragment the storage market in any way and make things less compatible, they're going to make everyone's life harder... :evil:

If I ever find myself living out the movie Falling Down (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/), I'll be sure to visit the Redmond campus.

[Ed Hansberry]

Actually the Linux based PDAs don't need to use FAT.
They can read cards formated with FAT, but they use CRAMFS internally.
No question they can use other systems, but if they remove the ability to use FAT, you can no longer swap a card in and out from a camera, PDA or other device that is formatted FAT. If you never do that, no big deal. If you do, you'll want a device that is FAT capable.

On MS doing this. I don't see this as a big deal. MS has been open with the FAT license for decades. This isn't a matter of them ignoring the technology that they developed and all of the sudden suing people when they themselves gave up on it years ago. They still use it to this day as a format native in mobile devices and as an alternative in their NT kernel products. They never turned FAT over to the open source community. This is very different from Xerox and Graffiti. Xerox doesn't use that patent, never had success with it and turned it into a money grab from Palm. Xerox had abandoned it. MS is still selling the product they developed internally and continue to improve upon to this day.

Greedy? Maybe. Within their rights as a smart business? Absolutely.

[gorkon280]

I think FAT could slip by with prior art and with a look at Kodak's and other's source code. This is stupid and any court of law who would rule over this would site the many many years preformatted diskettes, CF cards, mmc cards, memory sticks and usb thumb drives. Microsoft did not protect it's patent and it's now too late. Biggest arguement they could make is that they are using thier source code and I doubt Kodak and the like are using Microsoft's source code.

[HTK]

A memory card does not cost 50 bucks for the manufacturer, it costs much less, then some % is added for taxes and everything, so this charge will not be so cheap at the end.
and the not-so-funny thing will be when soon they invent another standard, from panasonic or something like that, and then sony develops another one ( as always ), and then we´ll have a mess with file formats...
a file format need to evolve, and we will be the poor hamsters to test all the flood of new and "inovative" new formats, full of bugs and etc.


bad move microsoft, another step into the war of making money in every single aspect.

Thats reminds me of Carmack from ID software... thats the exact opposit of what he would do.

[maximus]

I dont know about you guys, but 25 cents increase in flash memory price is no big deal for me. After all, the FAT technology is developed/licensed/patented by microsoft, and they did spend some R&D expense when developing it. If microsoft would like to charge something that belongs to them, it is fine with me ...

[HTK]

Do you guys think that they did not had any profit from fat ? they charged on other things, and now, after 100 years they want to pay the development?
don´t think so

[William Yeung]

Go with ext2 from linux- no one is going to charge for patent while its much better FS :P

I really doom this idea- the main reason is if they didnt charge for them at the beginning, they should not charge for them now. Its like the dirty game they try to play- make you adopt and controlled, then charge for it. Its insane and should not be allowed. Similar to what GIF on UNISYS on the encoding- its not that they cannot charge, but they cannot make everyone adopt and then charge for it. I hate it.

If they continue to do major move on it I would really seek a way to get away from M$. Its not honest business anymore.

[toxostoma]

Do you guys think that they did not had any profit from fat ? they charged on other things, and now, after 100 years they want to pay the development?
don´t think so

100 years? Hmmm... Sounds like a little too much exaggeration to me.

[DavidRoss]

That's really what bugs me. Yes, it's their technology and they have a right to it. But they should have been charging for it UP FRONT rather than letting everyone think it was free for over a decade, THEN saying "Oh by the way, we want money for it." Someone else already mentioned this, but what's next? Charging for DOC formats? The mouse cursor? The green start button?
.

The way i look at it is it like advertising in a few ways. (not every way of course, im sure you can some up with some differences) someone starts a site, a free site. they are giving the information away for free. they make no proclamation that when the site gets popular they are going to charge for it. they let the site grow. and at a certain point they add advertising, to cover costs, and time, and a lot of things. we as viewers now "pay" (with our time, at looking and clicking on adds) for the content on the site. i wouldn't expect you to not add advertising to the site, because at one point you did not have it, so you can never have it. If pocket PC thoughts had advertising from the start, as much as is does now, then i would say it would not be such a popular site. however it has proven itself as a good site, and so people are willing to put up with the advertising now.

i would say the same goes for Microsoft, if they had started charging for Fat at the start, it might not be as big as it is now. so it makes good business since.

[jfreiman]

Next they'll charge a fee for every document created in the Word ".doc" format. There's no differance. Nobody has ever charged for storing things in a format they created. You've had to buy products to create a specific format but I can't think of any time where a company actually charged for each time something was produced in that format.

Wrong, if you own MS Word, then there is no reason to charge a separate fee for creating Word documents.

This is not the same thing, Camera makers do not use DOS or any MS technology in there devices and should pay to use the FAT format - just like they pay their camera OS makers for use on there devices.

[jfreiman]

That's really what bugs me. Yes, it's their technology and they have a right to it. But they should have been charging for it UP FRONT rather than letting everyone think it was free for over a decade, THEN saying "Oh by the way, we want money for it."
Exactly.

Worse is the fact that this move may fragment disk formats in the storage-card market. Imagine not only having to worry about flash card type (e.g., SD, CF, MS, xD, SM, MMC) but also file format (VFAT, FAT32, NTFS, ext2, XFS, who knows what)?

Not only is it a lousy PR move, but it's ultimately going to hurt consumers in several ways, IMHO. They're certainly within their rights to do it, but what are they ultimately gaining?

--janak

Janak,

I think the problem you are describing above isn't a problem. The license fee as I read it is for the flash card makers and does not apply to the products which read and write to the FAT format.

Therefore a camera could read and write to multiple formats and not have to pay royalties for each format they are compatible with.

The burdon is on the manufactures of the flash cards and possibly in the future to devices which will format a (blank) card to the FAT format.

[jfreiman]

I dont know about you guys, but 25 cents increase in flash memory price is no big deal for me. After all, the FAT technology is developed/licensed/patented by microsoft, and they did spend some R&D expense when developing it. If microsoft would like to charge something that belongs to them, it is fine with me ...

At .25 cents per license with a cap of $250,000 - well that's quite reasonable in my book.

With that pricing and cap every card shipped with FAT past 100,000 drops the price per license.

If a company uses FAT for their Compact Flash, SD, MMC, USB Flash and USB memory players that's less than half the .25 cent license fee.

[Icebaron]

The way i look at it is it like advertising in a few ways. (not every way of course, im sure you can some up with some differences) someone starts a site, a free site. they are giving the information away for free. they make no proclamation that when the site gets popular they are going to charge for it. they let the site grow. and at a certain point they add advertising, to cover costs, and time, and a lot of things. we as viewers now "pay"

Not only is this not like what microsoft is doing in some ways, it's NOTHING like what microsoft is doing. When a site grows and begins getting more visitors, there are operating costs such as server space and bandwidth. Very few websites, even those with subscription services and advertising, draw much of a profit at all, their fees mostly cover the operating costs of the site.

The ubiquitous nature of FAT, however, actually MAKES Microsoft money. How, you say? Well, it's quite obvious that people using FAT today aren't costing M$ anything... most write their own code and use their own resources to do so. However, think how much less popular Microsoft handheld PCs would be if there wasn't a wealth of expandable memory available for them. Think how much less people would care about the great media integration of Windows XP if camera memory cards didn't work seamlessly with Microsoft's already-existing filesystem drivers. Think how much more convenient personal computers, from DOS all the way up through the latest incarnations of windows, became due to the wide availability of preformatted floppy disks. Even with no license fees, the fact that Microsoft allowed business to use FAT for free played a significant role in the adoption of their systems.

Now, after they've already USED the storage media industry as a whole to establish their own dominance, they want to go around and rape them for a licensing fee. Legal or not, within their rights or not, "reasonably priced" or not, it's dirty pool... and it sucks.

[maximus]

The burden is on the manufactures of the flash cards and possibly in the future to devices which will format a (blank) card to the FAT format.

Yes, the burden is on the manufacturers .. but surely they will pass it on to buyers like us, right ?

[DavidRoss]

Not only is this not like what microsoft is doing in some ways, it's NOTHING like what microsoft is doing.

its similar because its changing ones intentions, people (or company's) can change there stratagy when new circumstances arise.

If Microsoft was a poor company, then i think people wouldn't mind as much. its because they have Billions, and Billions of dollars, this whole thing about charging money for Fat seems frivolous, and mean.

however i think perhaps thats why they are so successful, because they still view themselves as vulnerable, and they want to use every opportunity they can to make money, just like a little company.


BTW... the reason i use advertising in my argument, is becouse im in a debate with jason; i want to change his mind about something... but you cant change peoples minds. So the trick is to make them see they already agree with you, they just dont know it ;) and my way to do that with jason is to use advertising.

[Kevin Daly]

I have 2 comments on this:

Firstly, I agree with other people that 25 cents doesn't seem like a lot to charge, and even if the manufacturers passed it on quadruple it shouldn't make a significant difference to the price of media.

Secondly, I find the wording of the Microsoft statement interesting:
Microsoft is offering to license its FAT file system specification and associated intellectual property. With this license, other companies have the opportunity to standardize the FAT file system implementation in their products, and to improve file system compatibility across a range of computing and consumer electronics devices.

If you are interested in obtaining a license...
That offers a rationale whereby licensing the FAT might actually be of benefit to manufacturers and consumers (OK they could be pulling our legs, but you never know), and also, I don't see here the shrill tones of (for example) the SCO "We'll sick our lawyers on you dirty thieves" approach. I may be naive (well, yeah, I probably am), but it's by no means clear to me from reading this that they're threatening to take legal action against companies who don't buy a license.

[Janak Parekh]

I think the problem you are describing above isn't a problem. The license fee as I read it is for the flash card makers and does not apply to the products which read and write to the FAT format.
Not according to Microsoft's page, as far as I can tell:

A license for manufacturers of certain consumer electronics devices. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit for each of the following types of devices that use removable solid state media to store data: portable digital still cameras; portable digital video cameras; portable digital still/video cameras; portable digital audio players; portable digital video players; portable digital audio/video players; multifunction printers; electronic photo frames; electronic musical instruments; and standard televisions. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per licensee. Pricing for other device types can be negotiated with Microsoft.
Am I misunderstanding it? I understand it's not a huge amount of money... unless you're a small company bringing a new product to market or something. I don't debate it's fully within MS' rights, I just don't see it as really being productive and I don't see MS as needing the revenue stream at this point.

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

its similar because its changing ones intentions, people (or company's) can change there stratagy when new circumstances arise.
This is a very oblique similarity, at best, and quite frankly I don't think it makes sense. ;)

BTW... the reason i use advertising in my argument, is becouse im in a debate with jason; i want to change his mind about something... but you cant change peoples minds. So the trick is to make them see they already agree with you, they just dont know it ;) and my way to do that with jason is to use advertising.
:confused totally:

--janak

[maximus]

BTW... the reason i use advertising in my argument, is becouse im in a debate with jason; i want to change his mind about something... but you cant change peoples minds. So the trick is to make them see they already agree with you, they just dont know it ;) and my way to do that with jason is to use advertising.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

:wink:

[manywhere]

Microsoft Tactical Sales Division has done it again! :twisted:

&lt; rant >
What I'm afraid of is that we, the consumers, will lose in this. What will happen when all SD/MMC, CF etc expension cards come pre-formatted in Apple's HFS or HFS+, Unix FS, or Linux FS? Well, no compatibility out-of-the-box with my Pocket PC (to begin with), that's what! :evil:

So, I would need to reformat them, but since Microsoft seems to want to tax FAT formatting software (their patent does not seem to have gone through for that yet), I will in fact have to pay more to buy formatting software for my Pocket PC! Unless the smart guys at MS realize that they left out the Format-command on Pocket PC anytimes soon... :roll:
&lt; /rant >

[corrosive]

Firstly two points :

1) The patents they currently hold are particularly on the Long File Name support part of FAT aren't they?
2) FAT is a terrible file system for Flash memory, not to mention a fairly poor (due to it's age) file system overall.

No problem with Microsoft charging for it - although it seems particularly crappy to wait so long and /then/ introduce charges, but maybe it will make people look at moving to a better file system.

&lt;waffle>

Of course, people can't start using a different file system as MS never support other peoples file systems (possibly excepting HPFS in NT), and there seems to be a lack of (support for?) plug-in file systems on Windows so third-party support looks unlikely.

So manufacturers would probably like to move to another FS now, but they won't be able to because if they do Windows won't support it.

So the only problem with all of this is we still end up stuck with FAT (so nothing's changed :) ) even though there's even more reason for manufacturers to move away from it now..

&lt;/waffle>

[fishel]

My 2 cents:

1 If you allow the something to be free in the public domain for 10 years, haven’t you lost your rights to it?
2 Are they going to charge $.25 for each floppy disk being sold (which is of course ridiculous)? And if not how can they legally make one type of media pay if another doesn’t?

P.S. IF I buy a “licensed” FAT file system can I now sue the licensee if I have problems with my file system (I.E. file corruption etc.)? The lawsuits could be allot more, then the revenue they gain

[Dr. Smooth]

I dont know about you guys, but 25 cents increase in flash memory price is no big deal for me. After all, the FAT technology is developed/licensed/patented by microsoft, and they did spend some R&amp;D expense when developing it. If microsoft would like to charge something that belongs to them, it is fine with me ...

Most of the posts here are coming from the angle of "25 cents is no big deal if the manufactuerers pass it on to the customer". They're right. But the bigger question is how &lt;em>will&lt;/em> the manufacturers respond? They may likely drop FAT in favor of some proprietary alternative. This would be bad. Card readers will be rendered obsolete overnight. The ability to pop a CF card out of your Canon camera and put it in your Axim and manipulate the filesystem -- gone.

Even an open-source filesystem would not solve this problem; none of the existing card readers would be able to handle the new filesystem without driver updates (that will likely never come).

[corrosive]

Even an open-source filesystem would not solve this problem; none of the existing card readers would be able to handle the new filesystem without driver updates (that will likely never come).

I'm pretty sure the filesytem is separate from the card reader driver, which is just a block driver, the filesystem lies on top of this.

[Jonathan1]

Yep, I would prefer everything for free.

As long as it's legal, MS has the right and you can bet they'll cash with everything they can, giving things for free in a first stage is a known competitor-killer, charging after a while for a standard is a cash-machine.

Did MS something wrong in the past? Let justice decide.



If I kill someone, and lets say in my made up country its legal, does it make it right? Just because something is legal doesn't mean it right or fair or just. This is "dirty pool" on the part of Microsoft. Sure they are entitled to make money but this is some of the same tactics they've used in the past. Very sketchy tactics might I add. But I guess now a days anything goes in the business world. Its very easy to praise Microsoft when you aren't the one getting screwed over by them.


I've come to the firm conclusion that there's no such thing as justice when it comes to big business. :? We could go off on a tangent on that one but lets move on.

[Mark from Canada]

Well, let's see:

1) You find a new way of doing things. :D
2) You patent it :lol:
3) Other people like it and use it. :)
4) Over years you see it grow to an industry standard many many people rely on 8)
5) You notice that the market is very mature now and changing to another system is costly and inconvenient for many many people :idea:
6) Now is your time. You declare you want money or nobody can use it any more. :twisted:

Reminds me a little bit of dealers giving drugs away to get you hooked and then charge for it. Or a little bit of extortion.

Are they in their legal rights? Yes!
Should they be in their legal rights? No!

Your right to go after people who infringe on your copyright or patents should expire soon if you don't actively go after people and ask them to license their product once it has become public knowledge that your system is being used.

Mark

[Tom W.M.]

Let's look forward to the days when every storage card you buy comes with a CD with drivers that allows Windows to read the proprietary filesystem on the card. :roll:

Microsoft's certainly within it's rights here, but I think that this will just make the storage card market even more confusing (and stupid). What are they playing at? They won't be able to sell anything if customers are too confused. :?

[Oleander]

I actually think that this is the perfect time to start charging for FAT! 8O
For us as consumers that is, not for MS! It is just a matter of time before we hit the 2 Gb limit and these cards become commonplace. AFAIK most of what we use today have support for FAT16 and not anything else. So... theese gadgets will become obosolete if they cannot read FAT32 .....or something else :twisted:

Unfortunately, I've been using computers for a time long enough to know, that even though this is a perfect opportunity, people will probably choose whatever MS is proposing. :roll:

[ethancaine]

:soapbox:

Seriously! Have none of you read the information on the next version of windows? It's going to have an "all new file system".

Here you go: We have a new file system that we need to get people to like, but everyone already likes our current file system. What we're going to do, is get people to not like this old one so much so they are more likely to subscribe to our new 'free' version when we release it next year.

It's called transition, folks!

[Oleander]

What we're going to do, is get people to not like this old one so much so they are more likely to subscribe to our new 'free' version when we release it next year.

From what I've read about the new filesystem in Longhorn, then it should be some kind of dbase, that should make et much easier for us all to categorise stuff in all kinds of silly ways, that would be hard to do otherwise. But I bet you that that kind file system takes a heck of a lot more processing power than what FAT does.

Now, do you really think that anyone in their right mind, would implement that kind of fluff in a camera, where all you really want is just to store your images for later download?

[gorkon280]

I dont know about you guys, but 25 cents increase in flash memory price is no big deal for me. After all, the FAT technology is developed/licensed/patented by microsoft, and they did spend some R&D expense when developing it. If microsoft would like to charge something that belongs to them, it is fine with me ...

They did not develop FAT...they bought it when they bought DOS.

[cyclist]

Just a thought, but how does this affect the rest of the world? For example, I thought software couldn't be patented in Europe.

Software can be patented in Europe, but it can't (at the moment) be copyrighted. That does make a big difference to the amounts of money though. For instance in UK the normal lifetime of a patent is 17 years, but the lifetime of a copyright is the lifetime of the author plus 70 years. FAT patents will affect Europe, but I'd have thought that they might have expired by now anyway.

Countries that don't generally respect intellectual property rights will just carry on copying anyway. Hmm. Where are the manufacturers of flash memory - Taiwan? And what is Taiwan's general attitude to intellectual property rights? I don't know, but it does sound to me like there could be the makings of a nasty trade war here, and it's a good bet that the consumer will be on the losing side.

[skypilot]

It seems that many people judge MS by a adifferent standard. Why should anyone give away technology or intellectual property?
Even here, MS allowed the widespread use w/ no charge to seed the industry. Lots of companies are now making huge dollars. Microsoft is entitled to a royalty, plain and simple.
It's as if we were expected to give away our time and energy as consultants. By the logic expressed by some, the more successful we are, the more time we should have to give away for free.........
It doesn't work that way for us, it shouldn't work that way for MS.

[Scott R]

A couple of thoughts...

1) Based on the wording that was quoted here (I didn't go to MS' site to read the full details), it sounds like they're not charging memory card companies that pre-format their memory cards, but rather device manufacturers that contain a FAT formatting program. So, Palm OS manufacturers would be charged. I wonder if they'll make them put a sticker on their PDAs that says "Microsoft Windows technology inside"? ;)

2) I think companies should be compensated for the technology they own. But I also think they shouldn't be able to spring this on the market 10+ years after its been in use freely. Even if MS doesn't back-tax companies, clearly this isn't a simple matter of a company having the option of switching to another standard with their new devices. Really, this reminds me of the whole Windows monopoly abuse issue all over again. Once you have a situation where numerous companies have standardized on a product due to that monopoly position, you no longer have the same rights that a company that is not in this position has.

Scott

[Zerothis]

"We've signed a number of licensing agreements and our licensing is available to anyone, including companies that sell open source software." - a Microsoft spokesman

"We've reached a trade arrangement with the Christian merchants. We invited everyone to the celebration. We hope to hang 9 virgin sacrifices for Odin to get the celebration started. Only one of the Christians says he'll come but doesn't want to provide any virgins. I just don't understand those people" - attributed to Olav Trygvasson

Its hard to say if the Microsoft spokesman gets it or not. But I'm sure someone at Microsoft understands that enforcing the patent for FAT makes it virtually impossible to develop OpenSource software that uses FAT. I imagine it won't be too long before Microsoft attempts to shut down all Linux distros that can read and write FAT. Linux distros will probably dump FAT in response. That forces people to stop straddling the fence and go either 100% Microsoft or 100% OpenSource.

Note: Mr Trygvasson later gave in and converted to Christianity. This move turned out to be quite profitable for him. Let us pray for Microsoft.