Hi, On 25 Sep 2013, at 23:29, Alexander Holler <holler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Am 26.09.2013 00:10, schrieb Greg Kroah-Hartman: >> Please stick to technical discussions about the code on the kernel >> mailing lists. Legal discussions can be left up to the lawyers, of >> which we are not. > > Hmm, but I would like to know if someone has to fear getting owned by > Microsoft if he would use that driver. > > Giving the rumours about Linux companies having to pay Microsoft and > giving the fact that all of those licencees seem to don't have to speak > about what Microsoft claims patents for and for what they have to pay, I > obviously think adding that driver to Linux and thus making exFAT more > general accepted is a very bad idea. > > Of course, I'm not a lawyer too, but as a responsible Linux developer, I > should at least be able to warn other parities when they approach me and > want to use exFAT. Doing such without the maybe necessary license might > drive small companies into the ground because most of them are unable to > even think about having the money needed to talk with Microsoft lawyers > in front of a court. Exactly. That is all I was trying to do. Warn people/companies not to use the driver because they may get sued for using it. As the below Microsoft exFAT licensing page says at the bottom: <quote> Please note that open source or other publicly available implementations of exFAT do not include an IP license from Microsoft. For licensing information, please contact IPlicreq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx. </quote> Above is from bottom of: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/IPLicensing/Programs/exFATFileSystem.aspx Best regards, Anton -- Anton Altaparmakov <aia21 at cam.ac.uk> (replace at with @) Unix Support, Computing Service, University of Cambridge J.J. Thomson Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 0RB, UK _______________________________________________ devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://driverdev.linuxdriverproject.org/mailman/listinfo/driverdev-devel
