Re: Provisions to the contribution guidelines for using LLM generated code

On 31 Jan 2025, at 10:12, paige@paige.bio wrote:
> 
> If you look at the older post, a lot of people didn’t think it belonged in the kernel even though it was GPL because of the patent. Fast forward to today Linus allowed ExFAT in but couldn’t get behind BCacheFS 😂 wonderful. 

Microsoft has issued an explicit patent grant of the exFAT patents *for Linux*.  The ‘Open’ Innovation Network manages a small pool of patents that are granted for Linux but not for the broader F/OSS ecosystem.  This grant does not apply to other implementations.

The patent that you reference was filed three years after exFAT was introduced and so presumably it is possible to implement exFAT without it.  It expires in two years, some other performance optimisations are covered by different patents, some of which are four years later.

Next year, I believe, all patents on the original version of exFAT will have expired, which makes it possible to implement an exFAT driver that is not patent encumbered, though without many of the performance improvements.

David