USB Thumb Drive

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 339, Issue 6, Message: 22
On Wed, 1 Dec 2010 15:59:30 -0500 Jerry <freebsd.user at seibercom.net> wrote:
 > On Wed, 1 Dec 2010 12:36:43 -0600
 > Ryan Coleman <ryan.coleman at cwis.biz> articulated:
 > 
 > > As the page says, it's READ ONLY in Linux... kinda pathetic. Thanks,
 > > Microsoft, for changing things AGAIN so you cannot be shared safely
 > > with others.
 > 
 > First of all, exFAT is a major improvement over FAT32 for Flash drives.

So is UFS, especially if you use suitable parameters to makefs :)

 > The fact that it is apparently only READ ONLY in a Linux environment
 > has nothing to do with Microsoft but rather with the FOSS community at
 > large. They could either purchase a license, which of course they
 > won't; or they could reverse engineer a driver for it.

That's rich, Jerry .. you expect FREE, OPEN SOURCE operating systems to 
pay Microsoft for a licence to implement a PROPRIETARY, CLOSED SOURCE, 
PATENT-PENDING filesystem?  Or reverse engineer it and risk a lawsuit 
for patent infringement, should the US Patent Office rubber-stamp it?

Ok, benefit of the doubt: how much would a licence to implement exFAT so 
it can be freely distributed with FreeBSD cost the FreeBSD Foundation?

No real clues at:
http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/IntellectualProperty/IPLicensing/Programs/exFATFileSystem.aspx?pf=true
but as an insider you should be able to get us some more solid info?

 > There is also this link on the page:
 > http://www.tuxera.com/products/exfat-for-embedded-systems/
 > 
 > Perhaps that might be of assistance.

To the ability to freely distribute exFAT access with FreeBSD?  Hardly.

 > In any case, I find using removable drives far easier on a Microsoft
 > machine anyway

Unless you were being compensated for such inconvenience, it's amazing 
that you'd ever consider using anything other than 'Microsoft machines'.

cheers, Ian