[NTLUG:Discuss] Abandoning FAT for ? ext2 ?

[kbrannen@gte.net]

fredjame wrote:
> Richard Geoffrion wrote:
> 
>> -----
>> From:
>> http://slashdot.org/articles/03/12/04/1318212.shtml?tid=109&tid=155&tid=187& 
>>
>> tid=99
>> Microsoft to Charge for FAT File System
...
>> So, push come to shove...do we remove FAT from Linux?   Is there an ext2
>> port to win32?

Yes, there are .dll's for using ext2 under win32.  Google is your friend, but 
IIRC, export2fs (or something like that) rings a bell.

...
> First, at 25 cents per unit manufactured it would take a million units 
> to equal $250,000.00 in license fees.
> Second, it appears that this is an offer to hardware manufactures - or 
> did I miss something?

Yes, the article and the MS website stated that it was aimed at manufacturers, 
so I don't think there's too much need to get all up in arms about this for 
Linux.  I suspect MS has learned something from watch SCO. (or at least I'd 
like to hope they've seen the folly of sueing your customers :-)

Also, the article title is misleading.  The patients cover shoving long 
filenames into 8.3 filenames.  So the patients really cover VFAT, not FAT. 
And finally, if you do the math on when FAT came out, you'd discover that it 
is beyond the patient time limit anyway. :-)

So manufacturers can still use FAT with no royalties, just use the 8.3 naming 
convention.  Case in point, the Olympus digital voice recorder that we bought 
at my church recently saves files with names like DSC00033.DSC, or something 
along those lines.  So some people may have already been aware of this, or 
else they just didn't want to expend the processing power (or ROM space) to do 
VFAT functionality.

Kevin