Microsoft's announced today that a federal ruling has deemed its Windows file-storage systems patents valid. The ruling will raise numerous concerns in the open source community.
The software giant's victory in the file allocation table (FAT) patents battle could demonstrate that global patents systems can be dangerous to the health of Linux and the open source community at large.
Microsoft could even force Linux users to pay them fees. Either way this ruling puts a bunch of power back in Microsofts hands versus open source. Let's hope they use this power wisely. My gut is that they'll do little about it. Open source is too popular and too large a movement. The backlash wouldn't be worth the hassle.
But this is one major political and PR coup for the software giant.
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