Computerworld reports that Microsoft has long been signing patent agreements with companies that use the FAT file system, even companies that use GNU+Linux (despite GPLv3 violations), long before their TomTom lawsuit.

When asked specifically if “there are companies using Linux and open-source software, which have signed FAT patent cross-licensing agreements, such as the ones, which TomTom has refused to agree to?” Gutierrez replied, “Yes, other companies have signed FAT patent licenses, both in the context of patent cross licensing agreements and other licensing arrangements.”

Why haven’t you heard of this before? It’s because Microsoft and the companies that have put these licenses under NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreements). So, while we now know there are at least 18 FAT LFN licensees, we still don’t know which companies have signed such deals.

It’s a classic legal dilemma: sign patent deals and risk a GPLv3 lawsuit, or don’t sign patent deals and risk a Microsoft lawsuit. I still don’t understand why these companies can’t just remove the supposedly patented material and avoid the issue entirely. It’s not like FAT is the only file system out there.

• Computerworld [Print Version]
• Digg

HP has freed AdvFS, its 64-bit filesystem, under the GPLv2.

The code contribution coincides, for example, with the current implementation of a Linux-enabled supercomputing grid environment on HP Integrity servers in southern Italy at the Southern Partnership for Advance Computational Infrastructures (SPACI), a previous user of Tru64 AdvFS on Unix.

Also built-in to HP’s Tru64 Unix OS, AdvFS is designed to provide 64-bit performance benefits such as a transaction journaling environment for file recovery in seconds, regardless of the size of the file system, and volume configuration on a single disk partition, an entire disk, or an aggregated volume.

Hopefully this will help free platforms gain ground in the 64-bit realm (as if they weren’t already ahead).

• Beta News
• Slashdot