Microsoft wants manufacturers to pay a licensing fee to use the FAT filesystem. Shame it's a "standard" now as it's got to be one of the mosty crufty hacked filesystems ever. Microsoft can charge a licensing fee as they've got a number of patents regarding FAT. It's a $0.25 fee per device with it capped at $250,000

Isn't this a counter intuitative thing to do? Most people use FAT because it makes it easier to interoperate with Windows. Okay, it's quite simple as well but after this manufacturers will think twice.