From: David McIntyre <plugh_at_mudbarn.com>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 13:11:00 -0800

Kinda depends on what patents are filed for the formats. Apparantly, Microsoft
has patents on their filesystem. I guess it remains to be seen whether they
have any on their data file formats.

On Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 03:26:17PM -0500, eD/ARd0 F/KEn^M3 wrote:
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > Had you seen this:
> >
> > http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/tech/fat.asp ?
>
> I wonder what this implies for Linux and the various "free dos"
> implementations out there. If FAT is just a 'way' to format a filesystem
> then isn't the word and excel document formats just a 'way' to format a
> file. They can't charge people for making (unencrypted) word and excel
> compatible files. How can they charge for FAT?

-- 
David McIntyre         plugh_at_mudbarn.com        http://www.mudbarn.com
PGP Key fingerprint = CAB5 A73A 43FA 19E3 449D  20B8 25D7 FA84 8847 D6A7
http://www.mudbarn.com/~plugh/plughinfo.txt for geek code, pgp key, etc. 

Received on 2003-12-04