Comment by fuzzfactor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fuzzfactor | Hacker News Reader

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The patents on FAT32 are now fully expired, including the final lingering LongFileName one.

Therefore FAT32 will remain preferred until the patents expire on exFAT, even though the specification for exFAT has been released, things like that have proven to be not good enough until after the patents expire.

The purpose of exFAT appears mainly to be an attempt to foist a new encumbered filesystem on developers now that the first mainstream Microsoft filesystem is in the public domain.

We will know when Microsoft has reduced their anti-user stance on filesystems after they have released very detailed full NTFS specifications in the most useful way possible.

Also I have the greatest respect for Dave, and like he mentioned he was only doing the UI not the bitmoving of the actual Format process.

Those who were developing the NT version of FAT32 formatting failed in much more serious ways where Dave did not.

The inconsistency compared to FAT32 formatted by W9x is actually intolerable.

Best reliability still requires booting to the DOS from W98SE to properly format FAT32.

The main use for FAT32 and exFAT is to transfer files between different operating systems or between a computer and some dedicated device, e.g. a photographic camera.

They are not useful for anything else except memory cards, USB sticks and external SSDs.

Unfortunately, nowadays it is frequently necessary to copy files larger than 4 GB. When using FAT32, you cannot do that without splitting the file and concatenating the parts at destination. That wastes time and it is annoying and sometimes it may be even impossible, when the destination lacks a concatenation program or an archiver that can deal with split archives.

After Microsoft released it, now exFAT is supported in the Linux kernel. Because exFAT is also supported by all commercial operating systems, it is now the best way for file transfer.

It does not matter any more if there are still valid patents for exFAT.

> It does not matter any more if there are still valid patents for exFAT.

Would you care to elaborate for why that is? Would anyone else with knowledge about the patent system and any possible risks imposed by it also like to do so?

Because, effectively, the exFAT filesystem is OSS since August 2019 and Microsoft released all the specifications to it [0]. Microsoft has essentially taken public, legal steps to ensure that anyone else can use exFAT without legal encumbrances and without threat of lawsuit.

IANAL - so there's likely some caveats (you probably can't just use the exFAT name unless certain qualifications are met, just like you can't use Firefox's trademarks willy-nilly), but that should be good enough for just about anyone. Including paranoid OSS peeps like me :)

0: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2019/08/28/exfat...

> Because, effectively, the exFAT filesystem is OSS since August 2019

No its inclusion in Linux was the result of a decision by Microsoft, not a granting of an open license. Any other implementation still has to apply for a license:

"For customers wanting only a patent license, you can contact us to learn more about the exFAT licensing program and request a pricing proposal."

I'm also not a lawyer, but AFAIK publishing a specification has nothing to do with whether the tech can be legally used without a patent license.

I don't know how the release to Open Invention Network affects things, though.

> Would you care to elaborate for why that is? Would you care to elaborate for why that is?

To put it bluntly, if Microsoft's guarantees are good enough for Linus so as to merge the driver in the Linux mainline, they're good enough for me too.

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