Ridiculous.
Ridiculous. Microsoft has started to start demanding
licensing fees from devices and media using the FAT filesystem, a
technology that they invented in 1976. (The patents which MSFT holds on
FAT, which allow them to extract this tithe, weren’t filed until 1995.)
More self-righteous (and righteous) bellyaching on the
slashy-dot. Note that this will hit probably every licensee of Palm
OS, because most devices can read and write SD cards, and every digital camera manufacturer, because they all
use media cards like SD or Compact Flash. SD cards and Compact Flash cards
are all formatted as FAT — it’s the de-facto standard for small,
portable file storage. So, $0.25 of every
Palm or every CoolPix (or every cameraphone, which, by the way, seem to
have surpassed traditional digital cameras in sales) will go straight to
Microsoft, per their licensing terms.
Oh, yeah, there’s FAT
code in the Linux kernel, too.
Remember, kids:
Step 1: Develop something.
Step 2: Make it ubiquitous.
Step 3: Wait. Over time, ubiquity leads to indispensibility.
Step 4: Profit like a motherlover!