Posted on 09/04/2019 4:10:46 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Tech Ping
After reading that line, I would discount every word by the author.
Yep
Reading this gave me a headache. The author is talking to himself and a very small audience. MS hasn’t ever liked Linux. It took market share.
While it is obvious that the author is a Liberal twit and all-around douche bag, his points about Microsoft are SPOT ON!
Unless MS releases ALL patents concerning the use of exFAT, then they will own the rights and will ultimately control Linux users.
This is a very good example of the old saying, “If you lay down with dogs, you’re going to get up with fleas.” MS is a parasite to any and all “partners” with whom they sleep!
I reacted in exactly the same way. Disingenuous, provably false, and utterly irrelevant.
Now my primary OS at work is RHEL. We use a few Win10 boxes for the things we absolutely have to use Win10 for by agency mandate. But primary development is on RHEL. At home I run one of several flavors of Linux and I have an Android phone. My wife, for better or worse (seems I've heard that phrase before in that context) is solidly in the Apple camp. The upshot is, we have one Win10 laptop, that actually dual-boots into Linux too. I boot Win10 about once a month or so to pick up updates. When this laptop dies, (it's a 4 year old hand-me-down as it is) I probably will not replace it with any other machine running Win10 as we no-longer seem to need it for anything.
All that said... I don't see this as a particularly nefarious move by MS. Oh, I am sure, 100% sure they are not doing this for the good of the Linux community. I do believe MS intends to gain a few things from this.
One, apparently the code for exFat is fairly ugly/crufty. They probably figure the open source community will clean that up for them and they'll incorporate it back into their own OSes.
Two, it "throws a bone" to the Linux community - for pure PR purposes. It makes them (at least on the surface) appear to be working with Linux, not against it.
Three, as I understand it they've garnered quite a bit of cash from their patents. Perhaps they're offering this up as a sacrificial lamb because they think they've just about run this cash cow into the ground?
Four, while exFat is terribly handy, it is really only useful (at least from a Linux standpoint) on thumb drives you intend to exchange with other users who are on some non-Linux box. I don't see exFat ever becoming all that important inside Linux. If MS starts making noises about patents and code now in the kernel - it'll be summarily pulled.
Five, exFat's usefulness is probably on the wane. Everyone seems to believe the Internet Of Things (IOT) is coming - with rampant IPv6 connectivity between everything with a little bit of power and room for a grain of rice sized chip. The thumb drive will go the way of the CD-ROM, floppy disk, cassette tape, etc. Who needs to transfer files via "sneaker net" when everything is connected and inter-operable? Pervasive networking will provide the transport. There is literally nothing in my house now that stores or uses data (particularly media such as photos/video/music) that isn't connected via wifi and/or bluetooth. Then only "island" is my car - a few years old now and just a commuter econo-box. It does require a thumb drive to play my music.
The upshot is, while I have no doubt MS's motives are far less than pure and are focused on what is in MS's best interests... I don't see that they can do anything to harm Linux directly with this move. They're only option would be to let exFat into Linux, then try to re-assert their patents. I believe that would be a tough sell legally, and as I mentioned, would see exFat pulled right back out to today's status-quo with hardly anyone in the Linux community noticing.
> After reading that line, I would discount every word by the author.
Yep. What an egregious, unnecessary, and totally irrelevant statement. Microsoft's many business sins and mistakes are its own.
Curiously, Microsoft has embraced (and has no intent to extinguish) the LBGTQWERTY movement, to the point of hoisting that movement's flag high above their headquarters. But I guess no amount of woke ass-kissing is enough for the Left.
Sheesh.
Reads like a rant from a leftist dweeb.
My reaction was the same. A partisan cheap shot is no way to get people to take you seriously.
Let me know how the article turns out - I’m done.
These idiot leftist authors don’t realize they lose all of their credibility and over half of their audience when the diss Trump and real republicans. Stopped reading at that point.
Maybe he just meant Creepy Joe Biden ...
“Microsoft loves Linux like Donald Trump loves the women whom he groped, illegally, by his very own admission.”
Well, if it is a choice between Donald Trump or Linux, I choose Donald Trump.
Excellent summary of the situation. Agreed on every point.
My frustrations and distrust of MS are just that - mine based on my experiences which are heavily colored by being a software developer. Having "grown up" programming in DOS and later Windows environments I simply much prefer to program in a Linux/POSIX environment. That gets into a whole host of reasons - a mix of technical and personal preferences - that aren't really appropriate here.
I'll make a prediction. 5 years from now I'll bet I don't even have any thumb drives in my desk drawer, and no exFat file systems anywhere to be found on my systems. I did use a thumb drive yesterday - I put a couple dozen movies on it in preparation for a trip. I could have loaded them directly on my Chromebook, but space is limited on that and I haven't gotten around to putting a high capacity microSD card in it. Prior to yesterday, I literally cannot remember the last time I used a thumb drive. I know last winter I updated the music on the thumb drive for my car. That may have been the last time - 9 months or so ago. That's really why I have a hard time attaching any nefarious motives to MS's move - I think they, like me, see the writing on the wall, exFat's importance is on the way out.
Thanks ShadowAce.
^
Yep... I knew it... NEVER TRUST MICROSOFT!!! EVER!
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