Re:Linux File System Driver (Score 1)

A few things to keep in mind:

1. Linux uses the FAT filesystem only for interoperability with Windows. This is not the native filesystem of Linux, and is not required.
2. The FAT filesystem is widely used by things other than Linux. For example, my digital camera uses FAT on the removable storage card. I imagine the storage card people would make easier targets than Linux. (Of couse, they could also argue that they used FAT because it was the only thing that Windows supported.)
3. They only upheld the patent; no case has been settled yet. There is still the issue of latches. Since Microsoft waited so long to enforce the patent, and FAT has now become a de facto standard for interoperability, can they turn around and start demanding royalty payments now? A lot depends on the judge, but there's certainly no guarantee that they would win.

In regards to the long versus short file names. FAT (actually, VFAT) is the only FS I know of that does this. The ext2 filesystem has no use for "short" file names. There are several other File Systems available on Linux, and AFAIK none of them have short and long file names. Short file names as described in this patent are a hack on the FAT file system, and are very specific to DOS and pre-NTFS Windows.