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Thereby entrenching the FAT patent fee scheme. This is a very odd decision that originated in the difficulty of renaming external volumes ( why was this consid
by dingaling 12y ago
Thereby entrenching the FAT patent fee scheme.
This is a very odd decision that originated in the difficulty of renaming external volumes ( why was this considerd important? ) and then became conflated with 'security'.
I believe the kernel modules are still there, though, so you can mount extx from the command line in dev mode. But not much use for everyday users.
- danmaz74 12y agoBTW, when will those patents expire? Shouldn't be long I guess..
- techrat 12y agoThe issue is exFAT and Fat32 long filenames. exFAT was introduced with Windows Vista and is what 32GB+ flash media tends to be formatted in. It'll be a long time before this one expires.
- overcertified 12y agoThere are at least 4 patents involved, extensible file system, name hash lookup, transactional fat, contiguous file allocation. If you look at overcertified'a recent slideshare presentations on exFAT, including the recent HTCIA 2014 exFAT presentation, the patent numbers are listed on the ending reference slides.
- caf 12y agoDoes anyone know exactly what innovation(s) in exFAT is/are newly patented? Which patents read on it?
- techrat 12y agoFrom wiki: >exFAT is a proprietary file system. However exFAT is protected under US patent law, and its initial application was issued on 10 July 2009 under the application number US2008168029.[7] On 12 November 2013, the patent was granted by the US patent office under US8583708. Patent length is 20 years, so we're looking at least until 2033 before exFat is expired and (safely) freely usable.
- cowsandmilk 12y ago> Patent length is 20 years, so we're looking at least until 2033 before exFat is expired and (safely) freely usable. Nope. For the dates this was filed, length goes from filing date. Depending on how dangerous you want to be, you could argue it expires anywhere from 2024-2028.
- danmaz74 12y agoThanks for the info - even if this really sucks!
- radicalbyte 12y agoAFAIK US patents expire 20 years after filing, which means that a number of them will soon be expired. http://www.google.com/patents/US5579517 http://www.google.com/patents/US5579517 expires next year. http://www.google.com/patents/US5758352 http://www.google.com/patents/US5758352 expires in 2016. http://www.google.com/patents/US6286013 http://www.google.com/patents/US6286013 expires in 2017. There is one more, which looked to have already expired: http://www.google.com/patents/US5745902 http://www.google.com/patents/US5745902
- pwg 12y ago5579517 is pre-gatt, so it is 17 years from date of grant, which for it is Nov 26, 1996 + 17 years => Nov 26, 2013 - so already expired. 5758352 is post-gatt, so it is 20 years from earliest priority date, the earliest priority date is Apr. 1, 1993 + 20 years = Apr. 1, 2013 - so also already expired (unless it has any term extension). 6286013 is also post-gatt, also with a priority date of Apr. 1, 1993 + 20 years = Apr. 1, 2013 - so also already expired (unless it has any term extension). 5745902 is pre-gatt, it patented Apr. 28, 1998 and gets 17 years from that date, so Apr. 28, 1998 + 17 years => Apr. 28, 2015 - it expires in about six months.
- higherpurpose 12y agoI'm puzzled that more OEMs aren't using Samsung's open source implementation of exFAT at least, which is already version 1.2.4. http://opensource.samsung.com/reception/receptionSub.do?method=search&searchValue=exfat http://opensource.samsung.com/reception/receptionSub.do?meth...
- techrat 12y agoexFAT is currently under Patent. Implement it all you want but Samsung pays Microsoft for the right to use it.
- higherpurpose 12y agoLast I checked reverse engineering without paying licenses was legal. And that's what this open source implementation of exFAT is.
- higherpurpose 12y agoLast I checked reverse engineering without paying licenses was legal. And that's what this open source implementation of exFAT is. As a monopoly on PC's, why is Microsoft allowed to collect royalties on the filesystem anyway? Is there another way to connect external media to a Windows PC without having to pay Microsoft royalties? If there is not, that should be an anti-trust issue.
- overcertified 12y agoFirst, reverse engineering in some cases may violate the DMCA regardless of what you do with the code. If a patent is valid, then reverse engineering doesn't get you anywhere. Patent is not copyright. You can sit down and write your own implementation of the code, not copying anything, and still violate the patent. Most of the people who complain about having to pay for exfat are the open source people who are used to getting what they thought was free software. However with the Heartbleed and shell shock issues this year the crditbity and false notions that open source are free are going down the drain. Meanwhile, Microsoft successful defense of the vfat (long for name in fat32) and mapping parents against Tom Tom has minimized cases where someone goes against those patents and almost all major distributions of Linux will not (and probably can't) add exfat to the distribution. That leaves most using FUSE and there are many complaints over the various forums about issues, bugs, and corruption ISO g the FUSE drivers.
- fuzzix 12y agoWasn't the patent mess the reason Android stopped supporting usb-storage and now uses (the horror!) MTP? I think UDF is well supported by everything now and has several advantages over FAT (including large file and basic rwx permissions support).
- cnvogel 12y agoThe rationale behind using MTP is that "in the old days", the android device had to unmount its "/sdcard" partition and hand over the block-device to the PC, that mounted it just like any single-partition usb-stick. Downside is, that a) the PC mounting the android device could arbitrarily corrupt the filesystem structure and b) all programs accessing the filesystem on the android side needed to shutdown, and c) you only could use a filesytem well supported by all major computer operating systems: hence FAT. MTP doesn't work on the level of a block-device, but rather works like, e.g. "rsync/scp/sftp over USB". So the Android handset can leave the partition mounted, all program can stay running, any filesystem can be used on the handset side, and potential for data corruption is minimized.
- fuzzix 12y agoBut it doesn't work like "rsync/scp/sftp over USB". No seek or partial transfer support makes it a dog. Very poor cross-platform support makes it a terrible choice.