Microsoft Joins Open Invention Network With Its 60,000+ Patents

[ZeroPointEnergy]

Every Microsoft or Nvidia thread is full of these conspiracy nutjobs.

You think those companies don't deserve the skepticism and people should just forget the past? They have been toxic to this community for years and now they have to really really provide some good reasons over the same amount of years that they changed if they want to get the trust back.

[antnythr]

So, will they stop Android patent trolling now? What about patents on filesystems like exFAT? Can commercial Linux distros ship exFAT packages without paying MS?

ExFAT was the first thing I thought of. It would be nice to finally have a truly cross-platform file system for sharing files on things like flash devices (that wasn’t limited by the 4gb file size limit like FAT32)

[muncrief]

Okay, now I'm really confused. At first I expected that this was just another feign from Microsoft, but from what I was able to find quickly it appears they threw in everything, from Android to exFat and beyond. I still can't help but expect there's some ulterior motive, or hidden constraints, but so far it looks pretty black and white.

Maybe I'm just dreaming ...

[dungeon]

60,000+ ??
WTF, they patented water, air or what?

Many exotic variants of GMO fart .

[caligula]

Microsoft has one Android patent that I'm aware of: Long filenames in FAT32. This is only relevant for devices with a microSD card, as they got rid of that filesystem everywhere else with the transition from USB mass storage to MTP.

I'm pretty sure the FAT(32) patents have expired by now. I think FAT32 was introduced in 1996 with Windows 95 OSR2.. patents are valid for only 20 years. The technology is 22 years old now. Besides the patent deals with conversions from long to short filenames and vice versa.

Wikipedia also mentions:
"In 2013, patent EP0618540 "common name space for long and short filenames" was invalidated in Germany.^[78]"

ftp://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_a...t-patents.html

[patstew]

I think Microsoft has genuinely been behaving itself much better since Satya "Microsoft loves Linux" Nadella took over from Steve "Linux is a cancer" Ballmer as CEO. The last evil thing they did that springs to mind was the infiltration and destruction of Nokia, which was before that. That's still quite recent though, so I guess the jury is still out.

Hopefully the big companies are starting to realise that the only winners from the broken anti-innovation patent system we have are lawyers and patent troll scum. Slightly more realistically I hope that this means mainline exfat and NTFS.

[Redfoxmoon]

I think Microsoft has genuinely been behaving itself much better since Satya "Microsoft loves Linux" Nadella took over from Steve "Linux is a cancer" Ballmer as CEO. The last evil thing they did that springs to mind was the infiltration and destruction of Nokia, which was before that. That's still quite recent though, so I guess the jury is still out.

Hopefully the big companies are starting to realise that the only winners from the broken anti-innovation patent system we have are lawyers and patent troll scum. Slightly more realistically I hope that this means mainline exfat and NTFS.

Ignoring the SJW crap they push on all their "open source" projects. sure. they've improved, not.

[wswartzendruber]

The first thing that came to mind was exFAT.

[karolherbst]

.....

please delete your account and rethink what you are actually doing here. for your own sake.

[dungeon]

I think Microsoft has genuinely been behaving itself much better since Satya "Microsoft loves Linux" Nadella took over from Steve "Linux is a cancer" Ballmer as CEO.

He, he, people should be awared that there are different definitions of love