Hi,
int13h wrote:
I have a question. If I was to implement any version of the FAT filesystem into my operating system,
and then sell my operating system commercially (for a tiny price), does Microsoft require a royalty?
As far as I know; all Microsoft's patents involved long file name support (and IBM had a patent for "extended object attributes" that nobody cares about), so if you don't support long file names (or "extended object attributes") there's no problem. If you do support long file names, some of the patents have expired but I don't think all of them have yet; which means that you might be able to find a "different but compatible" way of implementing long file names that doesn't infringe on whatever patents remain; and you might find that all patents have expired by the time you "finish" writing your OS.
int13h wrote:
Is FAT32 or earlier even copyrighted anymore?
Copyrights are completely different to patents. Microsoft's code (for MS-DOS, Windows, etc) would still be under copyright; but that only prevents you from copying Microsoft's code (and doesn't prevent you from implementing your own code, like patents can).
iansjack wrote:
My question would be why bother with FAT when there are far better filesystems available. I honestly wouldn't worry about the position when you sell your OS. It's very unlikely that you will ever have this problem.
The normal reasons are:
- "sneakernet" (to allow files to be transferred between different OSs and different devices - e.g. digital cameras, etc)
- to be able to work with UEFI's system partition
- to gain experience on something easier before tackling something more complex
For every other purpose (e.g. as the OS's main file system) the design of FAT is extremely poor.
Cheers,
Brendan