[Request] Please don't use crowdfunded money to pay for extra patent licenses! [answered]
asked 2014-11-28 19:41:45 +0300
A lot of people support Jolla because of your contribution to advancing mobile Linux and related open technologies. Using crowdfunded money to pay software patents' licenses to MS (such as for exFAT to support SD cards larger than 32 GB or the like) is not the investment many of your supporters would like you to make. That's like promoting further proprietary lock-in and funding MS software patents grip.
Please revise your stretch goal and instead of using those funds to pay MS, propose some goal which is in line with openness and innovation (may be contribute some resources to F2FS development and use it as well)?
UPDATE1:
One good suggestion how to address this issue without hurting usability came from a Reddit user @haagch:
Why is nobody speaking about the obvious solution? exfat support should be a paid "app" and cost exactly what it costs to license it from microsoft and it should say so in the app description. It could also be an "upgrade" for $XX that you select when buying the device.
I don't care about making an account there, but the reply to "If you want this to end educate your friends/relatives/whatever" should be to make a pop up: They will just plugin their sd card and get a pop up: "Want to use this sd card with exfat? Microsoft requires you to buy an exfat license for $XX to do that" and then allow them to easily buy such a license.
This way those who need it and don't care about giving their money to MS, can pay for it. And those who don't need it won't be forced to have it. Plus crowdfunded money won't be used for it as well. Which still would mean that the stretch goal should be about something else.
UPDATE2:
I missed the comment from @Fuzzilogic which essentially proposes the same thing. I'll add to the answer.
exFAT-support could be purchased and installed from Harbour. Those who need it can pay for it.
UPDATE3:
Some suggest, that exposing exact price that MS wants for the patent license might be problematic either because MS requires an NDA from company which uses it or because the price isn't fixed and is for example set in bulk depending on the number of devices. In such case Jolla can set whatever price they want for the end user, and pay to MS on their own. At least this will be kept as a conscious opt-in, and not a forced feature paid with crowdfunded money.
UPDATE4:
Some other concerns brought by Reddit users:
@scottywz: I think the issue is that they would be committing trademark infringement by saying that they support >32GB on SD cards but not supporting exFAT. Yes, trademark infringement: the SD Association only lets you say that you have an SD card slot or that you support certain sizes of SD cards if you follow the spec, and they use trademark law to enforce it. So of course you can format your card with another filesystem (at least I hope Jolla doesn't put in some arbitrary restriction on it), but Jolla still has to say they don't support cards greater than 32 GB in size. (Although I don't know if they can say why....)
@TheFlyingGuy: The SD association actually has their trademark licensing agreement such that you must support no more or less then the SD, SDHC or SDXC standards (which all include the previous ones). If you support more, then you lose the right to call it SD. So supporting SDHC with non-exFAT SDXC cards (which because SDXC demands exFAT technically aren't SDXC cards anymore) means you lose the right to call it SD or license any of the other patents.
@TheFlyingGuy: You can [support additional standards implemented on SD-class hardware] on an additional socket that is not SD compatible (because the SD standard socket is patented) so you could add in an additional MMC socket (which is mechanically incompatible but electrically and protocol wise share a common subset) with 128GB ext/4 support. Note, all the major memory manufacturers are SD concortium members, so MMC cards tend to be slow and use last-gen memory (hence smaller). And legal, perhaps not in the EU, but fighting this, good luck, many smaller vendors use MMC for a reason if they can deal with the limitations.
This surely is a major mess, which only strengthens the point that paying any money to MS to support this nightmare is an extremely bad idea.
I agree on that, yes.
Besides, who needs to format anything with any DOS-compatible fs'es (fat, fat16, exfat, ntfs, whatever) since simple and effective license-free solutions like ext4fs exist .)
juiceme ( 2014-11-28 19:49:50 +0300 )editYeah, I've gotta admit, they should go into greater detail about exactly what is going in to that first stretch goal. If people start associating it with paying a M$ tax, it might turn _off_ more contributors than it would attract...
Copernicus ( 2014-11-28 19:55:39 +0300 )editIf you want this to end educate your friends/relatives/whatever to alternative filesystems.
Oh wait. They don't care and they will just plug in their brand new 128GB SD card and expect it to work as is. To their phone, their win8 machine, mac to the neighbors phone anywhere.
Sad situation but Deal with it. Nothing to do. Jolla has to offer features not satisfy FSF and RMS. If they become big enough we will be able to forse btrfs on everyone. Until then ...
ApB ( 2014-11-28 19:57:56 +0300 )editIt's not about educating anyone. It's about using contributed funds to goals which are in line with contributors' expectations.
As for filesystems - you can format your card with NTFS and your non technical friends will read it just fine on their Windows systems. Another option is UDF.
And if you want this to end, the last thing we should do is funding MS lock-in and software patents.
shmerl ( 2014-11-28 19:59:28 +0300 )editFull ack. I purchased my perk I did it to support Jolla, even I was "a little bit disappointed" after I bought the Jolla phone with the expectation that really everything is open source. I still hope it will happen and I will still continue Jolla until I will lose my hope that this will happen. But as I read the stretch goal about 128gb SDXC I thought "WTF". Pay a license for unfree unnecessary feature is full the wrong way! Why not include a format when insert a >32gb card (of course with question to the user) if the card is exFat. Why not mount and make well links automatically? Please Jolla, think why people buy Jolla and support Jolla. What is the expectation of the customers. For me it's clearly I want to have open source firmware, and open hardware. I want transparency and control over my devices.
DiosDelRayo ( 2014-11-28 20:05:39 +0300 )edit