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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday March 26 2020, @12:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the better-late-than-never dept.

The exFAT filesystem is coming to Linux:

When software and operating system giant Microsoft announced its support for inclusion of the exFAT filesystem directly into the Linux kernel back in August, it didn't get a ton of press coverage. But filesystem vendor Paragon Software clearly noticed this month's merge of the Microsoft-approved, largely Samsung-authored version of exFAT into the VFS for-next repository, which will in turn merge into Linux 5.7—and Paragon doesn't seem happy about it.

Yesterday, Paragon issued a press release about European gateway-modem vendor Sagemcom adopting its version of exFAT into an upcoming series of Linux-based routers. Unfortunately, it chose to preface the announcement with a stream of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) that wouldn't have looked out of place on Steve Ballmer's letterhead in the 1990s.

Paragon described its arguments against open source software—which appeared directly in my inbox—as an "article (available for publication in any form) explaining why the open source model didn't work in 3 cases."

All three of Paragon's offered cases were curious examples, at best.

Case one: Android

Case two: MacOS

Case three: SMB

We congratulate Paragon on closing their timely exFAT deal with Sagemcom. Although there's good reason to believe that the Samsung-derived and Microsoft-approved exFAT implementation in Linux 5.7 will be secure, stable, and highly performant, it's not here yet—and it isn't even in the next upcoming Linux kernel, 5.6, which we expect to hit general availability in late April or early May.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by progo on Thursday March 26 2020, @02:36PM (11 children)

    by progo (6356) on Thursday March 26 2020, @02:36PM (#975887) Homepage

    Isn't ExFAT a non-free specification, encumbered by patents? Is that allowed in the Linux Kernel?

    Is it okay because Microsoft, the owner of ExFAT, is pushing it, and because they use Linux in Windows and Azure is full of Linux VMs?

    Why isn't any of the press coverage explaining the patent angle?

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by SvenErik on Thursday March 26 2020, @03:01PM (6 children)

    by SvenErik (2857) on Thursday March 26 2020, @03:01PM (#975901) Homepage

    Microsoft released the patents [wikipedia.org] to the Open Invention Network [wikipedia.org] in 2019.

    --
    "Every demand is a prison, and wisdom is only free when it asks nothing." Sir Bertrand Russell
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Thursday March 26 2020, @04:02PM (5 children)

      by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 26 2020, @04:02PM (#975935) Journal

      Microsoft released the patents to the Open Invention Network in 2019.

      [citation needed]

      Please provide a site which authoritatively and conclusively shows that M$ has (past tense) released the necessary specifications and code under a royalty-free license.

      That Wikipedia link goes to Phoronix, which while a very reliable site, writes only of a possible future event in which says only that M$ would probably release the patents at some future date. It makes no forward reference to that event having happened at all. One M$ engineer quoted there, alone, that he hopes that M$ will one day do that is not a commitment from the beast. It'd be a quick way to shut down all the distros by getting ExFAT everywhere and then demanding payment and or cross-licensing. It has been what they have been threatening quietly with Mono for years.

      --
      Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Thursday March 26 2020, @04:09PM

        by nitehawk214 (1304) on Thursday March 26 2020, @04:09PM (#975939)

        My guess is MS will make their implementation slightly incompatible with the free one. Thus making Linux systems using exFAT look like the bad guys for not providing a fully compatible filesystem.

        Its like the reverse of embrace-extend-extinguish.

        --
        "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @10:52PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @10:52PM (#976116)
        • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Friday March 27 2020, @05:55AM (2 children)

          by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 27 2020, @05:55AM (#976217) Journal

          Thanks, those are interesting and are a clear warning. Both links are so close to showing something, anything, about the patents, but actually don't. It appears very much that M$ GregKH signed off on the patch from Valdis Klētnieks without verifying the patent licensing. The patch seems to be GPL 2.0 and that is a good thing. It also means that the patent situation is addressed unless done so separately, something which the patch has not done.

          The first link, a blog, does not even mention patents. Both link onward to another page entitled, "exFAT file system specification", but that page links to neither the code nor mentions patents. It does have one line vaguely mentioning some unspecified changes to the licensing. However, it is a dead-end and does not link to any M$ code anywhere.

          In addition to the distros, it sets up Android for a big fall. It'll be using that tainted kernel soon. Assuming that M$ would go after the manufacturers instead of the individual users, that would make expensive trouble for Samsung and the other phone makers, but not Google/Alphabet. They'd just use an attack from M$ over the patents as an excuse to drop Android lock a hot potato and roll out Fuchsia as a full replacement.

          --
          Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2020, @08:12PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2020, @08:12PM (#976433)

            That commit was signed off by "Sasha Levin" . As an agent of Microsoft with apparent authority to authorize commits to the Linux tree coupled with Microsoft having agreed to the OIN License, granted access under provisions 1.2 of the agreement, among others, to all other licensees of the OIN by allowing such a commit to the Linux kernel under the GPL 2 without objection.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @01:06PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @01:06PM (#976616)

            >They'd just use an attack from M$ over the patents as an excuse to drop Android lock a hot potato and roll out Fuchsia as a full replacement.
            Actually, google stopping to churn out versions would be a good thing for Android...

  • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Thursday March 26 2020, @04:12PM (3 children)

    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 26 2020, @04:12PM (#975941) Journal

    Isn't ExFAT a non-free specification, encumbered by patents? Is that allowed in the Linux Kernel?

    It is now, with Linus out of the way and M$ Greg nominally in charge. Linus needs to pack up his trademarks, for the code, and move on like he had to do with OSDL.

    --
    Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
    • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @05:21PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @05:21PM (#975979)

      Linus himself is no RMS. He's already said "MS hate is a disease".

      https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/801240-linus-torvalds-microsoft-hatred-is-a-disease/ [neowin.net]

      • (Score: 4, Touché) by Bot on Thursday March 26 2020, @10:05PM (1 child)

        by Bot (3902) on Thursday March 26 2020, @10:05PM (#976099) Journal

        Except rms is always right, when speaking about software freedom, Linus already got burned once, see bitkeeper.

        --
        Account abandoned.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:02PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2020, @07:02PM (#976715)

          i wasn't agreeing with Linus. I agree with RMS too.