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A patch for the Linux kernel that could allow the use of the FAT file system without the risk of infringement of patents belonging to Microsoft has been released.

In February, the corporation from Redmond sued TomTom for infringement of a patent on the FAT file system. In response to this Microsoft's action, TomTom sued Microsoft. Although, corporations reached an agreement, the problem of legal use of FAT still remains.

It appears, however, that Linux can be free from the risk - at least in case of the FAT file system. Andrew Tridgell, one of the developers of Samba, has released a patch that modifies the behavior of the implementation of the FAT on Linux in such a way that it will not generate at the same time both short names (11-character conventions in the MS-DOS) and long ones. When the file name does not exceed 11 characters, the output will be only in a short form. Otherwise, the file name will be in a long format. It is this aspect of the FAT that is covered by the Microsoft's patent, and his patch effectively bypasses legal trap.

This is the second patch by Tridgell trying to circumvent the risk of patent infringement related to the FAT file system. The first one was released in May, and it completely removed the possibility of creating long names. It is easy to guess, that this solution was not accepted by the open-source community. Now the chances for the incorporation of his patch to the main compilations are much higher. Even if the patch does not appear in major Linux distributions, it will certainly help to minimize the risk of lawsuit especially in case of commercial companies implementing Linux.