[En-Nut-Discussion] Phat Formatting

[Thiago A. Corrêa]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 1:20 PM, Harald Kipp <harald.kipp at egnite.de> wrote:
> Henrik Maier wrote:
>> It indeed appears that the patent relates to long file names only. Refer to:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32#FAT_licensing
>
> After all these informations I come to the conclusion, that we should
> handle this with more care. We should consider to exclude VFAT
> compatibility from standard build and place related routines to the new
> contrib folder.
>

Wouldn't this affect the Linux Kernel as well as BSD? Given the
somewhat recent comotion about suposely patent infrigments on the
linux kernel, followed by several companies assuring and even selling
ensurances against this, I find it hard to belive that FAT poses any
issues. The VFAT is one of the most well known drivers/modules from
the kernel.
Perhaps we could ask the FSF for advice (?)