On Friday, Dec 5, 2003, at 11:52 US/Pacific, Peter L. Peres wrote:

>>> http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/tech/fat.asp
>>
>>  I hardly think 25 cents per product will break anybody's budget. For
>> =
>> anyone wanting any sort of PC connectivity, the cost of developing the
>> PC end for any alternative = format would be far more.
>
> 25 cents is 50% of he price of floppy disk media, each.

(it's not clear that the license applies to floppies.  Or
PIC-like dataloggers. The article specifically mentions SOLID STATE
media and CONSUMER electronics devices.)

This is typical microsoft bogosity, comparable to the recent
unix nastiness from SCO.

legally, I think they're on awfully shaky ground, having permitted
unlicensed use of FAT for many years now, without making much (any?)
noise.  If you want to claim you own IP, you have to make visible
efforts to protect it.

(And I'd think the long filename stuff would be covered by prior
art in EUNICE (a unix environment for VMS from SRI, circa 1982.)
It's not quite the same, but it was awfully similar...)

BillW

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