Am Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:25:36 +0200 schrieb Thomas Bächler <thomas@archlinux.org>:

Andreas Radke schrieb:

...

http://www.linux-foundation.org/weblogs/jzemlin/2009/03/31/on-the-tomtom-set...

I just read that article and it failed to make a point at all! What is it actually saying?

...

I haven't done further investigations but it seems we should take care about keep supporting the FAT file system.

How is the state with NTFS? Is the license situation there more safe?

Okay, you also fail to make any point. Please explain what this posting is about.

We should just be prepared that M$ might soon start to sue any company/distro that has no contract with them. If there's nothing to be afraid all is fine. -Andy

On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 7:36 AM, Eduardo Romero <k3nsai@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday 03 April 2009 08:09:41 am Andreas Radke wrote:

...

We should just be prepared that M$ might soon start to sue any company/distro that has no contract with them.

If there's nothing to be afraid all is fine.

-Andy

I think there is nothing to be afraid, Microsoft will dig their own grave the day they start doing so, there will be press coverage of this and the reputation of Microsoft will be hurt badly, and the EU will go after Microsoft and hunt them to the grave.

I was thinking similarly - suddenly suing all these companies that use FAT32 is going to backfire and some government somewhere is going to get pissed about what it means for end users.

On Friday 03 April 2009 07:24:47 pm James Rayner wrote:

And they backed down from Tom Tom too.

There is no way I will support dropping essential things like FAT support. You might be able to work without it Andy, but I'm

regularly

dealing with Windows boxes, flash drives, cameras, media cards, media players, that cannot use any other format.

James http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=3849

The above article is a good read, and gives power to what I originally said and Aaron agreed on. Microsoft is getting hurt with every patent they try to sue open source vendors with. They have to settle and get no compensation. Microsoft is weaker than it was 5 years ago, Steve Ballmer has to do with it, he is concentrating on the things that are wrong, sure maybe someone else can bring MS to the top again, but that is very unlikely, Steve Ballmer will remain there indefinitely. A year ago I was very pessimistic with the way Linux was fairing worldwide, nowadays I get more confident that Linux is getting stronger and that MS is having a hard time keeping up. What I have talked to with other IT's with are only Windows users gives me even more confident, they even believe MS is not going to get any better, and most of them agrees that Windows 7 is just another bad OS. So let's get our hopes up, Linux is going to get better and better.

On Saturday 04 April 2009 03:23:18 pm Dusty Phillips wrote:

What's this got to do with Arch development?

Dusty

I don't know myself, it just got into me that I wanted to write something. :-P But anyways, it does have to do with removing FAT support, at least the article expresses some good points about the whole situation, and how it is not over but is looking brighter for Linux than for MS. I just added too much of my 2 cents. Sorry everyone for the offense.

Am Sonntag 03 Mai 2009 schrieb Andreas Radke:

Am Fri, 3 Apr 2009 07:59:37 +0200 (CEST)

schrieb Andreas Radke <a.radke@arcor.de>:

...

http://www.linux-foundation.org/weblogs/jzemlin/2009/03/31/on-the-tomtom- settlement-microsoft-rolls-back-its-%E2%80%9Copen%E2%80%9D-promises/

I haven't done further investigations but it seems we should take care about keep supporting the FAT file system.

How is the state with NTFS? Is the license situation there more safe?

Opinions?

-Andy

Kernel developers are working on it:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.file-systems/31491/

We might think to use this option in our next kernel packages.

-Andy really, why to restrict vfat that way? Think of usbsticks with fat format, thats horrible imho.

greetings tpowa -- Tobias Powalowski Archlinux Developer & Package Maintainer (tpowa) http://www.archlinux.org tpowa@archlinux.org

On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 05:38, Jan de Groot <jan@jgc.homeip.net> wrote:

Might think about it yes, but actually don't include it. Even upstream has discussion about if this is the right thing to do. This thing is targeted at companies using linux in their embedded devices so they won't have a chance of getting sued by Microsoft for these invalid patents. I would consider this a huge regression when it enters the ARCH stock kernel.

Agreed. Removing FAT support would be a MASSIVE step back. We are not debian, there's no need to do this.