I just got my Murena One and am trying to migrate data from my old phone.
All my old android phones accepted exFAT sdCards (in the internal card reader) as well as OTG devices connected to the USB-C slot.
Murena One wants to format ANY device I connect: there is no way to read any data nor from an sdCard nor from an USB stick.
This severely limits the possibilities to transfer data to/from the phone, especially in a privacy friendly way.
This looks like a bug / error, maybe connected to the device: stock Android should have no issue whatsoever to read exFAT.
(someone asked that for teracube too) - it was a patents issue in the past. But Microsoft gave it to an opensource patentpool in 2020.
I’m not a lawyer, but I guess if efoundation (and their commercial arm) joins that “Open Innovation Network”, distributing an exFAT driver is covered by the membership.
Everybody and their dog is already on their list. Fairphone is - and at least /e/ is including exFAT since.
Doing some research I find it’s actually not a problem of e/os, but of Android in general. It seems only Android 13 will get official exFAT support - see here. So this is 1-2 major versions away from e/os.
It looks like I was spoiled in the last 8 years by the OEMs of my phones.
Samsung had its own implementation for years and did a cross-licensing patent deal with Microsoft to cover its distribution - including some litigation from Microsoft beforehand.
It’s not a technical hurdle bound to the version, but one of licensing. Even after you have a device with Android 13, if the manufacturer has reasons not to join the patent pool and doesn’t want to risk litigation, you could still get a stockrom kernel without exfat. But check that list, most hw manufacturers are on it or have outside agreements with MS.
If a company joins that OIN list, it can distribute Samsungs old 2013 exFAT implementation or the new one with an ageing 3.10 kernel for Android 7 without violating any patents that you’d otherwise (allegedly) infringe.
It being GPLv2 licensed doesn’t mean you potentially do not infringe someones patents on distributing them. That’s the whole threat of software patents.
ECORP SAS and e.foundation were already part of OIN in November a year ago, I didn’t check properly then - what changed is, LineageOS LLC joined, and the majority of maintainers reside with Lineage.
basically what got spelled out is, if kernel >= 5.7, mainline implementation is covered by the patent grant. As expected, but nice reading it. Below, it’s still up to if the stockrom had it.