[throwawaykf05]

Or, asserting their legal right to protect their investment in R&D that latecomers like Linux and Android simply ripped off. Just a matter of perspective, really. Is just that given open source is the dominant religion around these parts, that perspective is in the minority.

[danblick]

Honest question, what do you think was ripped off from Microsoft? I wouldn't think Linux or Android took much from them, really. (When I think of innovation at MS I think of developer tools, research on programming languages and distributed systems, and stuff like Photosync.)

[tracker1]

IIRC, the only areas that have been specifically mentioned have been surrounding filesystem access and structure, which MS has done a lot with, most of it outside patent protection now though. Not sure what else, as most articles can't/won't say as part of the non-disclosed parts of these contracts.

[bad_user]

One of their most potent patent that they're using a lot is the FAT patent.

Basically there are filesystems out there that are superior to FAT and not encumbered by patents, but device makers are forced to use FAT because of interoperability reasons.

This goes to show that the innovation argument is bullshit.

[tracker1]

FAT is out of patent protection, I believe FAT32 is now too... exFAT is newer, but imho undeserving of an extension patent. Not sure where NTFS is, but with larger external storage, that's my preferred format these days, even using the devices with mac/linux. The BS with the commercialization of ntfs drivers on osx is kind of weird as well... I usually use the macfuse/free/oss driver.

[aries1980]

Isn't FAT that was ripped off from CP/M?