Microsoft to charge for FAT file system!

[drmaximus]

The ramifications of this would be too terrible to imagine:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"According to Microsoft, the Redmond company is going to charge a license fee for any product that is formatted in FAT by the manufacturer. Any manufacturer of compact flash memory cards or digital cameras may end up paying Microsoft as much as $250,000 for the use of the file format. The FAT File System is covered by several US patents."

slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/04/1318212&mode=thread&tid=109&tid=155&tid=187&tid=99

Or more directly:

www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/tech/fat.asp

 

[RJ]

What will the ramifications be? Higher prices for digital goods, or new file systems?

 

[Webtwink]

i would like to know too about the consequences of this.

 

[Fusionhost]

Everythings going to be jacked up now
GRRR!

 

[Insane]

Jeez... Microsoft is in almsot all homes and is one of the richest companies and they wanna do this.

 

[DuffMan]

Don't newer versions of Windows use a different file system though? (NSTF or something)

 

[slipondajimmy]

NTFS ...close duff..lol Fat(File Allocation Table( was used alot with win95/98 to allocates disk space and chains file together. If im not mistaking it allowed errors to occur over time ...yadda yadda yadda. Damn i just relized i learned something in school ..lol


But im not sure how much it will effect the home user if any.

microsoft.com has the following information ...


Pricing and Licensing
Microsoft offers a commercially reasonable, nonexclusive license so that other companies can use the FAT file system in their own products. Currently, Microsoft offers two specific types of licenses:

A license for removable solid state media manufacturers to preformat the media, such as compact flash memory cards, to the Microsoft FAT file system format, and to preload data onto such preformatted media using the Microsoft FAT file system format. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per manufacturer.
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.
Microsoft's FAT file system license offers limited rights to issued and pending Microsoft patents on FAT file system technology, as well as rights to implement the Microsoft FAT file system specification. In order to ensure interoperability between the licensed media and devices and Microsoft® Windows®-based personal computers and to improve consumer experience, the license requires that licensees' FAT file system implementations in the licensed media and devices be fully compliant with certain required portions of the Microsoft FAT file system specification. To help licensees implement the FAT file system, Microsoft will also provide certain reference source code and test specifications as part of the licensing package in both licenses.

In some cases, companies may wish to negotiate broader or narrower rights than the standard Microsoft license for FAT file systems. In this case, pricing may vary. Microsoft remains flexible to adjust terms to reflect crosslicensing, unit volume, version limitation, geographic scope, and other considerations.




Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per licensee dont seem like its gonna effect the consumer to much

 

[drmaximus]

Originally posted by -RJ-
What will the ramifications be? Higher prices for digital goods, or new file systems?

As I am a digital photographer, the first thing that came to mind was my Canon digital camera, and the fact that it uses the FAT file system. Quite easily it would mean that prices of equipment such as this would rise, and pretty unnecessarily too, in the market's point of view of course. Most portable harddisks also work solely on FAT, so those too will be affected.

Most importantly, Microsoft is coercing people to adopt their (free) NTFS system, which is encrypted by them, and which is very hard or impossible to decipher. When more and more of the world switches to NTFS, we can only sit like ducks waiting to be shot. We'll begin to see what else they have up their sleeve once the world migrates to NTFS. Truly, I shudder at the mere thought of it.

 

[armstrong]

There are many file formats in use, and whichever is used is mostly transparent to the user (i.e., he doesn't know, and doesn't care). So I don't see why the manufacturers can't just invent their own, for common free use within the digital photo industry.

 

[Kodeking]

Microsoft is the butthole in the buisness! (I still use windows)