exFAT is no longer encumbered

[Adam Weinberger]

On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 6:38 PM Kevin P. Neal <kpn at neutralgood.org> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Dec 28, 2019 at 01:01:52AM -0600, Greg Rivers wrote:
> > As of last August, Microsoft have relaxed the patent restrictions on exFAT[1].
> >
> > Can the Makefile LICENSE_PERMS_MSPAT restrictions be removed from sysutils/fusefs-exfat? Might exFAT make it into the FreeBSD base system (like msdosfs) one day?
> >
> >
> > [1] <https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2019/08/28/exfat-linux-kernel/>
>
> I'm not sure that counts as a license. IANAL, but I'd like to see an
> explicit granting of a license to anyone at no cost, and the license needs
> to be transferable.
>
> The way Berkeley eliminated the advertising clause was good. Simply saying
> "Microsoft is supporting the addition of" doesn't really say anything.
> It's a statement of corporate direction and nothing else.

Expanding on what Kevin said,
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/mtl/exfat-licensing.aspx
suggests that (a) exFAT is still patented and restricted as before,
and (b) GPLv2 licensing was granted only for the Linux kernel module
that they submitted.

The BSD License grants the ability to use BSD-licensed code in
commercial products, so I'm not sure that Microsoft would want to
relax their licensing for us. As Kevin said, IANAL.

# Adam


-- 
Adam Weinberger
adamw at adamw.org
https://www.adamw.org