On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 10:36:48AM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote: > > but when Oracle bought Sun, more people > > were concerned. Someone could buy the company _just_ to sue for patent > > infringement --- happens all the time. > > Not as often as you'd think, and it hasn't happened in the database > world yet, for some good reasons. This is all besides the point, > though; PostgreSQL has been accepting contributions from patent-holding > companies for over a decade, and that doesn't seem likely to stop any > time soon. Greenplum is not in any way special, especially since we > already accepted contributions from Greenplum Inc. back in 2005-2006. > > Overall, this thread seems designed to kick up a lot of fuss with no > potential useful outcome. How about we terminate it now?
I am posting this at the request of Josh Berkus, who wanted clarification on some issues. FYI, I have been speaking in this thread as a community member, and not as a member of core, and made some mistakes in my handling of this --- my apologies. First, I have always seen the best intentions from every patent holder I have worked with in relation to Postgres, including the many Pivotal employees I have talked to. I understand the value of those patents to their companies and their companies' valuation, and releasing any kind of rights to held patents is never an easy decision. I know all companies involved are trying to deal with this complex issue in the best possible way. Second, if Pivotal had to chose one license to release their code under, Apache 2.0 was absolutely the best one, because of the patent clause. I will continue to work with them or anyone else as requested to see if there is an even better approach. The crux of my concern is that a patent in close-source software is barely visible --- it might be mentioned in marketing material or documentation, but that is unlikely. When something is released as open source, by definition, the patented idea is visible in that code. In a strange twist of fate, open source actually allows more chances for seeing patented ideas than closed source. I should have made this clear in my initial post, and there is nothing Greenplum-specific about any of this. My lack of clarity on this caused much confusion --- again my apologies. Steven might be right that if you don't know the patent is there, you are not any more culpable than if you discovered the technique on your own. However, the odds of you getting a patented idea from looking at the source is probably higher than the odds of you coming up with the idea on your own. Anyway, I just wanted people to be aware of these risks. I doubt we can really do anymore than warn folks as there is just no good boundary on how to avoid problems, as Andres and Simon pointed out. Josh is right that patent problems have been a rarity, and I have every hope that this will continue. -- Bruce Momjian <br...@momjian.us> http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com + As you are, so once was I. As I am, so you will be. + + Roman grave inscription + -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
