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UMSDOS and ZipSlackUMSDOS and ZipSlackPosted Dec 9, 2003 12:27 UTC (Tue) by IkeTo (subscriber, #2122)In reply to: UMSDOS and ZipSlack by forthy Parent article: Microsoft aiming IBM-scale patent program at Linux? (Register) The idea of UMSDOS is to keep a separate file to tell which 8.3 filename "maps" to the long file name, and to store the uid, gid and umask which is also needed for a Unix-style directory. I don't think it can serve as a prior art of VFAT, which uses directory entries which are interpreted as "deleted" in the old filesystem implementation to hold the long filenames. The former would leave an extra file visible by the old 8.3 filesystem implementation, the latter would not. The former is generic and can be done to any filesystem, the latter is specific to FAT and won't apply to anything else. I think the patent is probably valid (unless the objection that it is filed too late would hold some water). On the other hand, I don't think it really make sense for MS to ripe on it, since it would essentially kill the file format: there are dozens of better filesystem that (1) are free of patent issues, (2) have free implementations, and (3) have better performance than VFAT. Once MS start collecting patent money, vendors will start ditching the format (or fallback to 8.3).
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