If M$ pushes this too hard, it will make a big mess. Ideally, we'd end up with any of the open-source FSes (or a new lightweight one) except that you need a Windows driver for said FS. I know some people who've been involved in porting AFS to windows and at the time, it sounded like the license terms on the Windows FS SDK (which costs $10K or something) were essentially such that you couldn't redistribute code that you wrote against the API.

Laughing Boy wrote:
] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
] I'm sorry... my BS-O-METER is buried in the red. This reminds
] me of the Unisys claim that they were suddenly owed royalties
] by every company that sold software supporting .GIF image
] files a couple years back. There really need to be laws in
] place that prevent this "patent squatting" from happening. OH
] SO convenient for a corporation like M$ or Unisys to bite
] their lip for X number of YEARS until something is adopted as
] an industry standard... THEN try to claim they are owed
] royalties by everyone and their mother? NO. You have a
] patent? Fine - then you best make dilligent efforts to
] ENFORCE your CLAIM to that patent from the time you apply for
] it - that means going after companies that adopt your
] technology and collecting royalties from the get-go. Let it
] slide for X amount of time without enforcing it? You lose
] ****ALL**** rights to your patent and it reverts to the public
] domain without warning. End of story.
]
] LB

you may have a point, though i'm sure a lawyer could give you one or two decent reasons why the system isn't set up that way (as trademarks are, i.e.). This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that patents are time limited (much more so than copyright if i recall, like, 20 years i think). FAT may well be coming up on it's expiration in a few years. I think the fundamental issue is that computer technology moves to fast to be fairly represented by the existing patent system. all the timeframes for information systems related works need to be multiplied by .3 or .4, so that these things re-enter the public domain while they're still useful.

Laughing Boy wrote:

] I'm sorry... my BS-O-METER is buried in the red. This reminds
] me of the Unisys claim that they were suddenly owed royalties
] by every company that sold software supporting .GIF image
] files a couple years back. There really need to be laws in

Recall that this was a big deal at the time; e.g. open-source software couldn't support (creating) gif files without buying an LZW license from Unisys. The patent expired in the US in June and expires elsewhere next year; I'll blog details in a minute.