[ros-general] Microsoft wants royalties for use of FAT

[Mark IJbema]

On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 05:18:16PM -0800, Wierd Wierd wrote:
> >
> What is the legal status of HPFS- I know it was
> designed by microsoft, but from what I understand, IBM
> owns IP rights-- Is the patent on it still valid, and
> enforceable? If not, then it might be something to
> look at.  You might be able to take HPFS, and modify
> it to store DOS short names, for the benefit of the
> DOS subsystem later on.  I think IBM would be less
> eager to sue our pants off for using an HPFS variant,
> than MS would be for using a FAT or NTFS variant.

That wouldn't help as MS patented the idea of storing long and
short filenames at the same time in a filesystem.

Mark