01.24.13

Gemini version available ♊︎

New GPLv3-licensed exFAT Driver Not a Microsoft Patent Proxy for Linux Patent Tax

Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft, Patents at 8:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) gets exFAT, allowing the mounting of Microsoft’s patent tax trap

Two companies we wrote about before, Paragon and Tuxera, help Microsoft tax Linux through file systems. One more implementation arrives, but this one is licensed differently and uses FUSE. “Linus Torvalds and others in the past have characterized FUSE file-systems as being for toys and misguided people,” writes Phoronix, “but FUSE has been used before for bringing Sun/Oracle’s ZFS to Linux, various other creative file-system implementations, and now exFAT. ExFAT support for Linux has been talked about going back to early 2009 but the support has been crap on Linux.

“The FUSE-based exFAT project seeks to be a full-featured implementation for GNU/Linux and other Unix-like systems, including Mac OS X. With fuse-exfat 1.0.0, after three years in development, there is support for formatting exFAT partitions using the exfat-utils package while the FUSE driver does provide both read and write support for the Microsoft FS. Some of the recent changes found with the 1.0.0 release include improved write performance through enabling big_writes, improved OS X support, and various crash fixes.”

Another article says that “Open Source File System Takes On Microsoft’s exFAT Patents” (recall the TomTom lawsuit). The exFAT project uses a patents-hostile licence, GPLv3:

ExFAT project member Andrew Nayenko has released version 1.0.0 of fuse-exfat, a filesystem driver that can read and write to Microsoft’s exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) filesystem. Like the Ntfs-3G NTFS driver that is used in Linux distributions, the exFAT driver is based on FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) and works under Linux as well as OS X. In a short test with Fedora 18, reading from and writing to a USB flash drive that was freshly formatted with exFAT worked fine.

See the Slashdot discussion. There is no patent tax in this case, but it still helps Microsoft spreads patent traps like FAT. For read-only purpose performance might not be a hugely important consideration, so having this patents-free option is probably fine. █

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

DecorWhat Else is New

  1. Do Not Assume Pensions Are Safe, Especially When Managed by Mr. EPOTIF Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos

    With the "hoax" that is the financial assessment by António Campinos (who is deliriously celebrating the inauguration of illegal and unconstitutional kangaroo courts) we urge EPO workers to check carefully the integrity of their pensions, seeing that pension promises have been broken for years already

  2. Links 04/06/2023: Why Flatpak and Wealth of Devices With GNU/Linux

    Links for the day

  3. Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Rosy Crow 1.1.3 and NearlyFreeSpeech.NET

    Links for the day

  4. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 03, 2023

    IRC logs for Saturday, June 03, 2023

  5. Links 04/06/2023: Azure Outage Again (So Many!) and Tiananmen Massacre Censored

    Links for the day

  6. Links 03/06/2023: Qubes OS 4.2.0 RC1 and elementaryOS Updates for May

    Links for the day

  7. Gemini Links 03/06/2023: Hidden Communities and Exam Prep is Not Education

    Links for the day

  8. Links 03/06/2023: IBM Betraying LibreOffice Some More (After Laying off LibreOffice Developers)

    Links for the day

  9. Gemini Links 03/06/2023: Bubble Woes and Zond Updates

    Links for the day

  10. Links 03/06/2023: Apache NetBeans 18 and ArcaOS 5.0.8

    Links for the day

  11. IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 02, 2023

    IRC logs for Friday, June 02, 2023

  12. The Developing World Abandons Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux at All-Time Highs on Desktops/Laptops

    Microsoft, with 80 billion dollars in longterm debt and endless layoffs, is losing the monopolies; the media doesn’t mention this, but some publicly-accessible data helps demonstrate that

  13. Links 02/06/2023: Elive ‘Retrowave’ Stable and Microsoft's Half a Billion Dollar Fine for LinkeIn Surveillance in Europe

    Links for the day

  14. Linux Foundation 'Research' Has a New Report and Of Course It Uses Only Proprietary Software

    The Linux Foundation has a new report, promoted by Clickfraud Spamnil and others; of course they’re rejecting Free software, they’re just riding the “Linux” brand and speak of “Open Source” (which they reject themselves)

  15. Links 02/06/2023: Arti 1.1.5 and SQL:2023

    Links for the day

  16. Gemini Links 02/06/2023: Vimwiki Revisited, SGGS Revisited

    Links for the day

  17. Geminispace/GemText/Gemini Protocol Turn 4 on June 20th

    Gemini is turning 4 this month (on the 20th, according to the founder) and I thought I’d do a spontaneous video about how I use Gemini, why it's so good, and why it’s still growing (Stéphane Bortzmeyer fixed the broken cron job — or equivalent of it — a day or two after I had mentioned the issue)

  18. HMRC Does Not Care About Tax Fraud Committed by UK Government Contractor, Sirius 'Open Source'

    The tax crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were reported to HMRC two weeks ago; HMRC did not bother getting back to the reporters (victims of the crime) and it’s worth noting that the reporters worked on UK government systems for many years, so maybe there’s a hidden incentive to bury this under the rug

  19. Our IRC at 15th Anniversary

    So our IRC community turns 15 today (sort of) and I’ve decided to do a video reflecting on the fact that some of the same people are still there after 15 years

  20. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 01, 2023

    IRC logs for Thursday, June 01, 2023

  21. Links 02/06/2023: NixOS 23.05 and Rust 1.70.0

    Links for the day

  22. Gemini Links 02/06/2023: Flying High With Gemini and Gogios Released

    Links for the day

  23. Links 01/06/2023: KStars 3.6.5 and VEGA ET1031 RISC-V Microprocessor in Use

    Links for the day

  24. Gemini Links 01/06/2023: Scam Call and Flying High With Gemini

    Links for the day

  25. Links 01/06/2023: Spleen 2.0.0 Released and Team UPC Celebrates Its Own Corruption

    Links for the day

  26. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 31, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, May 31, 2023

  27. Tux Machines Closing the Door on Twitter Because Twitter is Dead (for a Lot of People)

    Tux Machines recently joined millions of others who had already quit Twitter, including passive posting (fully or partly automated)

  28. Links 31/05/2023: Inkscape’s 1.3 Plans and New ARM Cortex-A55-Based Linux Chip

    Links for the day

  29. Gemini Links 31/05/2023: Personality of Software Engineers

    Links for the day

  30. Links 31/05/2023: Armbian 23.05 Release and Illegal UPC

    Links for the day

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts