
Samsung's exFAT Linux driver officially released as GPL - 0x0
http://sfconservancy.org/news/2013/aug/16/exfat-samsung/
======
maaku
I didn't hear about this the first time around so maybe I missed out, but the
press release is not clear. It doesn't actually seem like there was a GPL
violation. Samsung released a binary in one product. They later applied the
GPL to that component as it is used in another project. That shouldn't have
any retroactive effect on the first, however.

Still great of them to release the earlier code though.

~~~
hosay123
They produced the driver under license, somehow someone got a hold of the code
and "guerilla relicensed" it, which they did not have authority to do, and
uploaded the result to Github.

Sometime later when this repository was noticed on Github, someone noticed the
source was a derivation of one of the existing Linux FAT filesystem drivers.
In other words, under the terms of the GPL it is derived code. The fact it was
only previously distributed in binary form does not excuse this: Samsung were
distributing GPL derived code in violation of the license.

So this clears things up a little bit. What I don't understand now is the
usefulness of this code. For example, could it potentially be merged upstream?
If not, then why not? If it can be distributed under the GPL independently, I
don't understand why it couldn't get shipped with Linux.

The fact this driver exists "legitimately open source" now, yet is still
covered by patents, confuses me a bit.

~~~
0x0
It's probably in the same situation as ffmpeg, x264, lame, (previously) gif
encoders etc are or were.

If it is true that non-US countries do not acknowledge the related patents, it
would be a very interesting situation if anyone were to make it integrated in
a git fork of the mainline kernel. Could we end up having a richer git
branch/repo hosted on "kernel.eu"? Would others do pull requests on top of
this, thus meaning further kernel patches (related or not so related) get
interwoven? Would a "us compatible" mainline linux stagnate while an off-
limits-for-americans "eurolinux" flourish? Probably not for just a fringe fs
driver that can stay separate. But what about possibly-US-patent-covered
patches to the core, if they provide enough benefits?

~~~
WildUtah
Source code can't infringe US patents because source code isn't a machine or a
process or a composition of matter.

A machine running a Linux kernel can be plausibly accused of infringing
thousands of active US patents even without FAT support. There is no version
of Linux that does or could ever pass a patent clearance review in the USA.

The distinguishing character of the VFAT patents is that Microsoft threatens
to sue people over them. I don't know of any cases they've won so far and no
patent is actually infringed until a jury says so.

~~~
caf
Does this mean that Fedora is wrong when they say _" This means that we cannot
include MP3 code, even as source."_?

[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Forbidden_items?rd=ForbiddenI...](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Forbidden_items?rd=ForbiddenItems#MP3_Support)

~~~
cbhl
No, because Fedora releases binaries.

~~~
caf
I was referring to the " _even as source_ " part.

(They make package maintainers excise MP3 code from upstream tarballs and
repackage those, not just patch it out of the compiled code - it's a massive
pain).

------
regularfry
What's the patent status of exFAT?

~~~
mbreese
I thought it was clear that Microsoft was still asserting patents on exFAT.

Link stolen from wikipedia: [http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/legal/intellectualproperty/IP...](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/legal/intellectualproperty/IPLicensing/Programs/exFATFileSystem.aspx)

So, GPL or not, it doesn't do Linux a whole lot of good, since it can never be
properly included.

~~~
devx
Doesn't anyone else think having the company with 90 percent market share in
PCs charge for access their OS this way, is a little insane? How did the anti-
trust committee miss this one a decade ago?

~~~
cbhl
exFAT is new, and actually quite different from FAT32/16/12\. If I recall
correctly it has things like extents, xattrs, and support for files >2GB.

The only reason to use exFAT is if you need a filesystem that can be accessed
from both Windows _and_ Mac OS X. If you only need Windows, then use ntfs-3g.
If you only need Mac OS X, then use HFS.

~~~
ajross
exfat is also the default filesystem on Android devices for large (>32G
maybe?) SDXC cards. It has clear advantages over FAT on huge filesystems,
though this is excruciatingly annoying as it's easy to forget to format it
wrong by accident and end up with a filesystem I can't read from my Linux
machine.

What use is removable media without a universally recognized format?

~~~
cbhl
That's because exFAT is mandated by the SDXC specification, whereas SD only
required FAT [citation needed].

Presumably, the original reason the exFAT driver was written in the first
place was to enable Android devices to read SDXC cards.

------
samspenc
I remember there was heated discussion about whether the initial "release" was
legit or not. Was that ever resolved?

~~~
0x0
The first version seemed to be a leak with a very unclear licensing situation.
This here is the resolution :)

~~~
zokier
The licensing situation of the leak was quite clear; it was proprietary code
without any doubt.

------
inthewind
Not wanting to be tangential but is exFAT any good? And what do others use for
a cross platform file system? I sadly had to format a portable 600GB drive as
FAT32 the other day, just so it would play ball across OSs and devices. I went
to use extFAT, then realised I'd have to use FUSE to get it to work so fell
back to FAT32.

Also is it backwards compatible with the other FATS; as in can't you read an
ext4 as ext3 (hoping that I haven't made that up)?

~~~
mariuolo
Problem is FAT32 can't handle anything beyond 4GiB (or 32 with some trickery)
and we've reached that limit.

Would you rather use a journaling FS on a flash drive?

~~~
cbhl
No. Flash drives are slow enough to write to without having to write things
(even metadata) twice.

------
ksec
Um.... so GPL Code can be Patented??

~~~
jlgreco
Sure. IIRC, even GPLv3 allows it (GPLv3 just requires patent licensing terms
iirc).

~~~
mbreese
This was released under GPLv2, so it may not even require that (iirc2).

~~~
nknighthb
GPLv2:

> _7\. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
> infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
> conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
> otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
> excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so
> as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any
> other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute
> the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit
> royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies
> directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both
> it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the
> Program._

This means anyone distributing this driver -- including Samsung, since they
are not the sole copyright holder -- is on, at best, extremely tenuous
footing. I don't expect Samsung has license from Microsoft to sublicense the
relevant patents to the world.

