On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 11:45:29AM -0500, Taavi Burns wrote:
On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 12:37:42PM -0500, John Macdonald wrote:
# U.S. Obvious #5,579,517 Long Common name space for and shorts filenames # U.S. Obvious #5,745,902 Method and system for accessing has file using file names having different file name formats # U.S. Obvious #5,758,352 Long Common name space for and shorts filenames # U.S. Obvious #6,286,013 Method and system for providing has common name space for long and shorts spins names in year operating system
Okay, as someone else said, these all seem to relate to long filenames on FAT (i.e. VFAT). What about people who don't use those extensions? My digital camera sticks very strictly to the old 8.3 filenames. And hey, if a Linux person needs to use a FAT drive for file exchange, but usually use Linux, there may be a revisiting of UMSDOS. ;)
That's no going to work. Long names are convenient to use, and the MS license is just 25 cents per device (or less - there is a cap so large volume manufacturers pay less per device on average). A free alternative might be better (ext2 might work), but again it is the camera and USB device makers that have to be convinced. For now, they support FAT and ensure Windows customers or go to lengths to allow Linux customers and reduce their sales to Windows customers. As a higher proportion of the target customers become Linux instead of Windows, they will eventually get some incentive to change - that will like happen first outside of North America. -- The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml