Recently, it may have come to your attention that Microsoft and TomTom, the Sat Nav maker, have reached a settlement over a patent dispute. The dispute revolves around the FAT file system, and it’s use in the TomTom’s Linux based OS. Microsoft said that the use of this file system infringed their patent, and so to court. In a smart move by TomTom, they joined the OIN (Open Invention Network), which is a group of companies, big and small that share their patents, thus increasing their portfolio in the event of a lawsuit. The trade off being that patents you have go into the pot for any other company in the same scheme to use.
Microsoft backed down a little, and a settlement was reached whereby TomTom pays Microsoft for patent protection regarding mapping and the FAT file system. The Linux Foundation has now publicly stated that people should ditch the ageing, and proprietary, FAT file system for one of the many alternatives such as Ext3. All well and good in penguin land, but the problem being that if you are a Windows user, your computer won’t read a SD card formatted with Ext3 natively. However, almost any computer will read FAT. The answer to this is to try and get vendors to use an open, and universal file system that companies can use to avoid the encumbered FAT file system. Of course getting Microsoft to adopt support for the aforementioned file system might be a gargantuan struggle.
So this goes to show a few things, the first being that Microsofts recent cosying up to open source is perhaps more show than anything else. The second is that to go at Linux and open source with a fist full of patents is not going to end in pots of cash, indeed, it would be pure folly, as members of the OIN include big hitters like IBM, SONY, and Red Hat. It also goes to show that getting rid of the deeply entrenched FAT file system is not going to be easy, but if Linux has shown us anything, it’s that it can achive great things.
