MS patent on FAT a problem for ros?

[oiaohm]

Note 23 percent is down back when they were starting it was like 400 percent. So that should not worry MS much.

Linux will not back off that is for sure. Linux first interest is of course super computers and embeded. Since they pay a lot of programmers. 200 dollar machine battle this year is going to be intersting.

[Carlo Bramix]

To be honest MS started this whole legal issue with the idea the if they won they could go on calming that they had the reserved rights to the full concept of the file system. This Tacit failed for clear reasons. Fat was meant to be a president in a much larger issue.

With my experience, I can tell you that the approach is usually different.
A company invents a technology and then it applies a patent on it.
If this technology has success, other companies will copy it, for adding its features to their products.
After a while, usually 5 or 10 years (in other words enought time for a good park of cloned machines), the first company pops out and it says: "Do you want to continue to use our cloned technology? You can do it, just pay a royalty".
Although we never know the true intentions of Microsoft, in the world of the market this is the most common scenario.

Sincerely,

Carlo Bramini

[Haos]

Note that porting a Linux FS driver to IFS is not an easy kind of job. Just wanted to point out that we dont have any spare kernel developers...

[digiboy]

The Intel EFI spec includes an open source type license on FAT code which EFI uses.

Could also use this to work around MS patent.

[MadRat]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWare_File_System Novell alteration of Fat. If ms want to be a prick just bring it back from the graveyard. Its provides security features.

If we cannot work out NTFS to write to it dependablely not reason why latter releation of netware could not be used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell_Storage_Services.

In my opinion Netware is the better filesystem compared to NTFS. Would Novell even allow it to be the base of an open source OS? I doubt it. They don't even make it easy to use with Linux right now. Sure, its gained more open Linux support in 2007, but that took way too long.

Big thing people are forgetting drivers writting for Ros should in theory be portable to Windows without much work. Thinking Linux supports Novell_Storage_Services. Ext2 is getting very old in tooth and trouble making for Linux users. Ext3 and Ext4 is needed. Not Ext2 that require rebuilding of journing after using on a Ext3

I'd think NFS <--> Ext2/3 translation would be trivial compared to NTFS <--> Ext2/3 translation. If anyone was going to build netware filesystem support for ROS then they'd be making potential inroads to ext# fs's, too. But you are right, Ext2 is getting to be outdated and unworthy of support in ROS in the long term.

[Haos]

But you are right, Ext2 is getting to be outdated and unworthy of support in ROS in the long term.

I care to disagree. What do you mean by unworthy of support in ROS? There already is an IFS version of Ext2. ReactOS is going to support IFS, not for the sake of Ext2, but because Windows does it. Not supporting Ext2, even in a long run, would be rather difficult.

[Haos]

Fat16 is still used only in storage devices. Why would anyone use FAT16 on HDD? Its impractical.

[oiaohm]

EXT3 filesystem driver can operate a EXT2 filesystem safely.

But a Ext2 driver cannot operate a Ext3 filesystem correctly. As well Ext2 drivers drive Ext3 users nuts. Upto 30 mins to rebuild the filesystem jounerling per partition. Define painful.

Basically Ext2 driver is too old and harmful.

[Haos]

Strange... I use both drivers. Ext3 on Linux and Ext2 on Windows (as Win32 IFS driver) to access Linux partitions. Journal rebuilding on 60gb of partition space doesnt take up more than several seconds and is almost unnoticeable.

[Sand]

Note 23 percent is down back when they were starting it was like 400 percent.

In which country? Was it the same in the US?

[oiaohm]

Dos era Sand when Bill gates back being a pirate.

[inclusivedisjunction]

I wouldn't worry about it. Devices smaller than 2 GB can use FAT16, on which the patent (if they had one) would have expired a decade ago. So there is, just like the LZW algorithm, no problem with using it. For stuff like external hard drives, it may be an issue, but one can format a drive with another filesystem, like ext3, that can be read from Windows with an IFS. ReactOS could be developed on a FAT16 partition until it gains support for a better filesystem.

[oiaohm]

Fat32 is usable. inclusivedisjunction Long filenames on Fat most cases MS patent on them has not held up.

[inclusivedisjunction]

Fat32 is usable. inclusivedisjunction Long filenames on Fat most cases MS patent on them has not held up.

So then there's no issue.

[oiaohm]

It is if long filenames patent holds somewhere restrict usage to 8.3 filenames.