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Comment by mmalone | Hacker News Reader

That may have been true in the past but, as far as I know, Microsoft hasn't been that way for years.

Every large tech company has a patent portfolio. Hell, Google bought Motorola to get their patent portfolio to use defensively in suits against Android.

In my opinion companies should not be punished for using patents defensively. It's really the only viable option outside of a major legal change. So, I think Microsoft giving other people access to their portfolio for defensive purposes is a good thing. It should _reduce_ the amount of patent litigation.

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There is a difference between only using them defensively, and using them for protection racket. As far as I know, MS still do the later (especially with Android).

They also like standards poisoning with their patents, and then collecting money from everyone who is forced to use that. Example - exFAT widely used on SD cards. Why didn't everyone use some free filesystem? Because MS.

> Why didn't everyone use some free filesystem? Because MS.

When you look on Wikipedia, there are like a dozen goofy file systems that a developer could use for flash storage. They could sort through all that or, you know, they could just use FAT, like everyone has done forever.

I wonder if the open source world's perpetual inability to get behind one standard hurt them there.

Usage of anything other than MS supported file systems would have led to devices that don't work out of the box on windows pcs plus even if your user is a OK with installing support it's entirely possible for Microsoft to sabatoge such an effort silently which would sound awfully paranoid if they hadn't been found to have done just that in other instances.

The reason FAT and exFAT is being used with devices, is Windows.

If you used any other fs, like f2fs, the ordinary user would insert the card into their computer - and nothing would happen. No, Microsoft is not going to ship alternate filesystems with Windows, when they can use theirs as racket.

You might be right, but it's worth noting that nobody with any pull - the digital camera industry, the smartphone industry, the storage manufacturers - ever even tried to make it happen.

I'm kind of surprised, Samsung didn't push f2fs more. They initially announced it as a flash oriented and free filesystem, and promised a Windows driver as well. I don't think it ever materialized. And Samsung have enough weight to push it through.

Yeah. They're one of the ones who could do it, especially since they'd probably be able to ally with Google wrt Android. It's a real lost opportunity.

Just speculating. It could be a leverage thing. They created it, and MS gave them free usage of exFAT or anything of the sort (in return for not pushing it further). Could be just usual mismanagement too.

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