In 2007, Microsoft shook up the Linux community with claims that open source allegedly infringes on as many as 235 of Microsoft’s patents. Until this year, Microsoft had not actually filed any kind of legal suits on those patents – which changed with the TomTom case.
With TomTom, Microsoft showed its hand, and identified some of its IP issue with Linux as being related to FAT (Define:FAT). At the time, I thought the legal challenge was a great thing for Linux because it finally showed devs where Microsoft had some issues. Developers have long said they would simply replace or code around Microsoft’s IP, but they first needed to know where that IP resides.
Now Linux developer Andrew Tridgell has developed a patch that could potentially help out Linux users to get around the FAT issue.
“Both the original patch and the new patch that we posted today
have been through legal review by several lawyers who specialize
in this area,” Tridgell wrote in a mailing list posting.
