Microsoft Signs Licensing Agreements for exFAT

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Microsoft Corp. announced today that it signed patent licensing agreements for the use of the latest Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) with five companies, spanning industries including high-end camcorders, digital cameras and Android tablets. The agreements cover Sharp Android tablets, Sigma and NextoDi high-end cameras and accessories, and Black Magic and Atomos Global broadcast-quality video-recording devices.

exFAT is a modern file system that facilitates large files for audiovisual media and enables seamless data portability for an easy interchange of files between electronic devices. exFAT vastly improves on its predecessor, the FAT file system, and expands the size of files that flash memory devices can handle by more than five times. It also greatly increases the speed with which those files can be accessed.
 
I wish they'd just use Samsung's F2FS instead of the Microsoft FS-du-jour.
 
Which means they will sue those using exFAT without a license.
Bad news for Linux users.
 
I don't know why they don't just use UDF. This is the kind of thing it was designed for, and all significant operating systems have a reader.
 
FAT filesystems are the cockroaches of storage devices. Seriously, it's 2012 and no other alternatives are widely used? Really?
 
pxc said:
FAT filesystems are the cockroaches of storage devices. Seriously, it's 2012 and no other alternatives are widely used? Really?
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Standardization. There are literally hundreds of gadgets out there that runs on memory cards. The same memory card that runs on my phone can also be read by digicams, videocams, car stereo, portable media players. If i were to take a picture or video with my cheapo digicam, it will run on my cheapo media player from a different manufacturer. If a manufacturer were to suddenly change their file system, the customers will wonder why they can no longer read it on any of their other devices. If a device were to support two file systems, it'll default into FAT to stay compatible with other devices and most users aren't tech savvy enough to set it to the 'better' file system so why bother?
 
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