Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
Edward Ned Harvey sh...@nedharvey.com wrote: From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris- discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of russell Given that computer software is just a series of mathematical operations expressed in a form that can be interpreted by a processor, I find the whole concept of software patents less than original. Given that hardware design is done in software languages such as HDL, I guess your argument could be extended to say that there is no such thing as a patentable piece of software or hardware invention. In Europe, software patents are permitted in case that they are related to hardware. But in any case, patents are anachronistic. Patents have been created to protect inventions made by single personss against big companies 200 years ago. Patents are now perverted by the big companies against the original intention. This is a fact that is known sice more than 100 years. Telefunken, one of the biggest inventor company (they e.g. build hundreds 10 GHz silicon diodes in 1942 already and they invented the optical fiber communication) has been founded in 1903 by AEG and Siemens on behest of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, in order to to work around the fact that AEG and Siemens prevented each other to work on communications technology because of patents. Telefunken could use all patenfs from AEG and Siemens for free and this way was able to become the world leader in telecommunications within one year (leaving behind Marconi instruments). Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
From: Joerg Schilling [mailto:joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de] But in any case, patents are anachronistic. Patents have been created to protect inventions made by single personss against big companies 200 years ago. Patents are now perverted by the big companies against the original intention. What difference does it make if the patent is owned by an individual, or owned by a company which is owned by some number of individuals? All companies have ownership, you know. If I own a company, or even shares of a company, that pays salaries benefits to a team of engineers and pays for all their tools, and all my engineers have agreed to intellectual property agreements with the company, then I want to know that my investment is protected. As soon as my engineers invent the wheel, I want to know that my company's competitors can't just copy it. It's unfair for my competitors to reap the benefits of the work that I paid for, or personally contributed to as an engineer on a team. Unless there is some agreement between my company and the competitor, for them to pay royalties to my company. I agree that patents in general (not just software patents) inhibit creativity and productivity overall. But nobody wants to give away their life's work for free, so the only way to replace or obsolete the present system of patent law is to create some other system ... whereby anybody can use anybody's invention, provided that due royalties are returned to the original inventor. Regardless of whether the original inventor was an individual or company. The problem is, what do you call due royalties? The only way to assess value of the invention is via free market, or dictatorship. And the only way to ensure users are paying proper royalties, is for the inventor to watch out for people using the invention unlicensed. AKA: The only possible solution is for patent holders to sue other people for infringement, and the only way to determine what's a fair price is to let the patent owner and consumer negotiate. Which is exactly what we do today. I think it stinks, but that's a direct result of human nature being flawed and no clear solution is known that protects everyone's interests. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
Edward Ned Harvey sh...@nedharvey.com wrote: From: Joerg Schilling [mailto:joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de] But in any case, patents are anachronistic. Patents have been created to protect inventions made by single personss against big companies 200 years ago. Patents are now perverted by the big companies against the original intention. What difference does it make if the patent is owned by an individual, or owned by a company which is owned by some number of individuals? All companies have ownership, you know. Patents have been introduced in otder to work aginst the unbalanced relation between producing companies and inventors. Aprox. 200 years ago, there have already been producing companies but they did usually not do own research. They instead produced inventions from single persons and patents have been neded at that time. There is an interesting parallelity with the Copyright. In Great Britain, the Copyright law was introduced in 1710, in Germany the Urgeberrecht was introduced in 1837. During the time between 1710 and 1837, Germany was leader in Book production and there have been aprox. 520 books with 500-700 books per edition. In Germany 10x more book have been created and these books have been much cheaper than in Great Britain. An average author did earn more money in Germany than in Great Britain. The reason was that with Copyright law, the price of the books can be dictated by the publisher, without it is only important to be first with a new idea. Without Copyright, there is a need to have many authors to produce many books in order to allow all publishers to be successful. The efects of introducing OpenSource are contrary to the effects from introducing Copyright law Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
You (Joerg Schilling) wrote: In Great Britain, the Copyright law was introduced in 1710, in Germany the Urgeberrecht was introduced in 1837. Nice typo... ;-) It's the Urheberrecht, not the Urgeberrecht. But, it might have been a good idea to create a copyleft instead of the copykeep... Matthias -- Matthias Pfützner | Tel.: +49 700 PFUETZNER | When a building is as good Lichtenbergstr.73 | mailto:matth...@pfuetzner.de | as this, fuck the art. D-64289 Darmstadt | AIM: pfuetz, ICQ: 300967487 | Philip Johnson on the new Germany | http://www.pfuetzner.de/matthias/ | Guggenheim Bilbao Museum ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
On Sep 13, 2010, at 7:01 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote: If I own a company, or even shares of a company, that pays salaries benefits to a team of engineers and pays for all their tools, and all my engineers have agreed to intellectual property agreements with the company, then I want to know that my investment is protected. As soon as my engineers invent the wheel, I want to know that my company's competitors can't just copy it. It's unfair for my competitors to reap the benefits of the work that I paid for, or personally contributed to as an engineer on a team. Unless there is some agreement between my company and the competitor, for them to pay royalties to my company. There's also a public good argument. When you patent something, yes, you get a temporary monopoly -- but the tradeoff is you have to publicly reveal it. In the absence of patents, more technological advances would be treated as trade secrets and kept out of the public eye. I do think there are a lot of abuses of the patent system, most of them related to insufficient vetting of new patents and the expense of litigating them later. I think something like the patent system is necessary, though. -- David Brodbeck System Administrator, Linguistics University of Washington ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
On 09/13/10 08:22 AM, joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: But in any case, patents are anachronistic. Patents have been created to protect inventions made by single personss against big companies 200 years ago. Patents are now perverted by the big companies against the original intention. Single persons like Paul Allen? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/27/paul_allen_patent_offensive/ ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
John Martin john.m.mar...@oracle.com wrote: On 09/13/10 08:22 AM, joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: But in any case, patents are anachronistic. Patents have been created to protect inventions made by single personss against big companies 200 years ago. Patents are now perverted by the big companies against the original intention. Single persons like Paul Allen? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/27/paul_allen_patent_offensive/ I can't see Paul Allen listed as inventor.. So this is obviously a miss usage of patents. Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
There's also a public good argument. When you patent something, yes, you get a temporary monopoly -- but the tradeoff is you have to publicly reveal it. In the absence of patents, more technological advances would be treated as trade secrets and kept out of the public eye. I do think there are a lot of abuses of the patent system, most of them related to insufficient vetting of new patents and the expense of litigating them later. I think something like the patent system is necessary, though. The length of the monopoly should be part of the discussion; I can see why a patent for a medication should be as long as it is now, but for software and perhaps hardware too, I'm thinking more of 5 years and not longer. Also, the law should be changed to disallow patent trolls: if you don't ship or plan to ship a product using your patent, then clearly you're not suffering when someone else is using a similar invention. Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
On 09/13/10 13:21, joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: John Martin john.m.mar...@oracle.com wrote: On 09/13/10 08:22 AM, joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: But in any case, patents are anachronistic. Patents have been created to protect inventions made by single personss against big companies 200 years ago. Patents are now perverted by the big companies against the original intention. Single persons like Paul Allen? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/27/paul_allen_patent_offensive/ I can't see Paul Allen listed as inventor.. So this is obviously a miss usage of patents. Jörg Really? Are you sure. I can think of several criteria that might be used here. 1. Are you the original inventor? (What about companies that pay for the RD?) 2. Are you the company that paid for the RD? (What if you are, but you have no plans to make a product based on the patent?) 3. Did you purchase the rights to the patent (not inventor) and do not have a product that uses it? (what most people mean by patent troll) 4. What if you purchased the patent and do have a product? I believe that Paul Allen falls into category 2, not category 3. Not the classic patent troll. -- blu It's bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state. - Bruce Schneier ---| Brian Utterback - Solaris RPE, Oracle Corporation. Ph:603-262-3916, Em:brian.utterb...@oracle.com ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
casper@sun.com wrote: Also, the law should be changed to disallow patent trolls: if you don't ship or plan to ship a product using your patent, then clearly you're not suffering when someone else is using a similar invention. This is against the original intention for patents: Patents have been filed by inventors that do not product products and that look for a manufacturer... Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
casper@sun.com wrote: Also, the law should be changed to disallow patent trolls: if you don't ship or plan to ship a product using your patent, then clearly you're not suffering when someone else is using a similar invention. This is against the original intention for patents: Patents have been filed by inventors that do not product products and that look for a manufacturer... Sure, but practice has changed; now patents are sold to patents trolls and not to industry. Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
On 09/13/10 08:22, joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: But in any case, patents are anachronistic. Patents have been created to protect inventions made by single personss against big companies 200 years ago. Patents are now perverted by the big companies against the original intention. Huh? The basic concept dates back to 500 BCE. They have even been called patents since the 1400's. That's longer than 200 years. And it has never been about single people or large corporations. It has been about granting limited monopolies to promote innovation. To put it simply, patents exist to maximize the rate of inventions entering the public domain. When you look at it this way, the rest becomes much simpler. It may not always be easy to measure, but when you adopt that position, you just have to ask, will this change increase the rate of innovations entering the public domain? Should software be patentable? The answer depends on whether the patents promote or stifle innovation. Would the same software have been invented if they were not patentable? Less or more? Is the term long enough or too long? Same answer, stifle or promote? The same applies to copyrights. That's why it was totally absurd when Congress voted to extend copyright terms retroactively; are dead authors likely to write more works because the term is longer? -- blu It's bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state. - Bruce Schneier ---| Brian Utterback - Solaris RPE, Oracle Corporation. Ph:603-262-3916, Em:brian.utterb...@oracle.com ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
casper@sun.com wrote: casper@sun.com wrote: Also, the law should be changed to disallow patent trolls: if you don't ship or plan to ship a product using your patent, then clearly you're not suffering when someone else is using a similar invention. This is against the original intention for patents: Patents have been filed by inventors that do not product products and that look for a manufacturer... Sure, but practice has changed; now patents are sold to patents trolls and not to industry. If this selling would be prohibited, life could be easier. Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
Brian Utterback brian.utterb...@oracle.com wrote: On 09/13/10 13:21, joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: John Martin john.m.mar...@oracle.com wrote: On 09/13/10 08:22 AM, joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: But in any case, patents are anachronistic. Patents have been created to protect inventions made by single personss against big companies 200 years ago. Patents are now perverted by the big companies against the original intention. Single persons like Paul Allen? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/27/paul_allen_patent_offensive/ I can't see Paul Allen listed as inventor.. So this is obviously a miss usage of patents. Jörg Really? Are you sure. I can think of several criteria that might be used here. 1. Are you the original inventor? (What about companies that pay for the RD?) The original inventors are listed in a patent. 2. Are you the company that paid for the RD? (What if you are, but you have no plans to make a product based on the patent?) ... I believe that Paul Allen falls into category 2, not category 3. Not the classic patent troll. I have no problems if patents do what they have been designed for. Allow to claim patent rights for personal inventors to prevent companies from using the invention wihout paying for it. Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
Brian Utterback brian.utterb...@oracle.com wrote: On 09/13/10 08:22, joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote: But in any case, patents are anachronistic. Patents have been created to protect inventions made by single personss against big companies 200 years ago. Patents are now perverted by the big companies against the original intention. Huh? The basic concept dates back to 500 BCE. They have even been called patents since the 1400's. That's longer than 200 years. And it has never been about single people or large corporations. It has been Do you know of a patent office that is much older than 200 years. about granting limited monopolies to promote innovation. To put it simply, patents exist to maximize the rate of inventions entering the public domain. When you look at it this way, the rest becomes much simpler. It may not always be easy to measure, but when you adopt that position, you just have to ask, will this change increase the rate of innovations entering the public domain? Should software be patentable? The answer depends on whether the patents promote or stifle innovation. Would the same software have been invented if they were not patentable? Less or more? Is the term long enough or too long? Same answer, stifle or promote? prohibiting patents would prevent a lot of useless and bad things. Liniting the patent rights to 2 or 5 years could also help a lot. let me thing os e.g. the fact that Sony did never pay PAL patents because they used a PAL demodulator that was not covered by the PAL patent but much worse and much more affectes by aging effects. The customers did only notice the problem 6 months after the purchase then warranty at that time was over. The same applies to copyrights. That's why it was totally absurd when Congress voted to extend copyright terms retroactively; are dead authors likely to write more works because the term is longer? The reason for extending Copyright terms in 1992 was to allow the bavarian government to extent the time when they can prohibit Mein Kampf to be published and in the USA it was Disney... Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris- discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Joerg Schilling I have no problems if patents do what they have been designed for. Allow to claim patent rights for personal inventors to prevent companies from using the invention wihout paying for it. I don't think that's what patents have been designed for. I think patents allow any entity, including individuals or organizations, to prevent any other entity, including individuals or organizations, from using the invention without paying for it. I haven't heard any compelling argument to limit patent ownership to individuals, nor to limit patent lawsuit complaints to just companies. Even if there were such an argument, it doesn't really seem to matter, does it. This whole conversation is just an off-topic tangent. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
I certainly hope the terms of the settlement are released. Keeping it secret would conspire to cast FUD on all other distributions incorporating ZFS or considering it; most of which would be targeted at folks well below the Fortune 500, which means those not wealthy enough to qualify as Oracle customers anyway. :-/ Somehow the Register always knows more then the other news sources;-) excerpt from news: NetApp and Oracle have agreed to dismiss their respective lawsuits against each other without prejudice. ZFS-using companies such as Coraid and Nexenta can now go ahead free of the threat of NetApp interference The supposition now is that Compellent, Coraid, GreenBytes and Nexenta can go back to using ZFS without the threat of NetApp legal action. I guess since ZFS is released under CDDL whom ever uses it is also covered. I think what really happen was Oracle told NetApp, if they wanted to be next on oracle's companies to buy list;-) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/09/oracle_netapp_ zfs_dismiss/ Just because Oracle and NetApp dismissed their lawsuits against each other, it does not follow that ZFS-using companies such as Coraid and Nexenta can now go ahead free of the threat of NetApp interference. I'm not saying that's what happened, but since the agreement reached is confidential, for all we know NetApp could still go after anyone other than Oracle. Use of the CDDL code may grant a license to relevant patents, but I don't see that it protects a licensee from being sued by a 3rd party. If the agreement doesn't either, then Oracle has, for ZFS, effectively allowed NetApp to reduce the value (by increasing the risk) of that license. Hypothetically, if Oracle regretted that Sun's CDDL allowed others to profit from the ZFS patents and implementation, the confidentiality of the deal with NetApp provides a way to discourage others from doing so without altering the terms of the license. At least I think that's possible. Again, I'm not saying that's what's happened, but it is why I think a confidential settlement is still disruptive to other players wishing to incorporate ZFS into their products. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris- discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of russell Given that computer software is just a series of mathematical operations expressed in a form that can be interpreted by a processor, I find the whole concept of software patents less than original. Given that hardware design is done in software languages such as HDL, I guess your argument could be extended to say that there is no such thing as a patentable piece of software or hardware invention. Good luck pushing that uninteresting and limited point of view. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris- discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of No Real Name This would only matter if they were still worth doing development for. It's not a wise investment of time at this point, and probably never will be again. This matters to dimwit suit wearing fracktards, but to everyone else it's pretty irrelevant in the bigger picture. You're reply has no context, except in the web interface. If you'd like to engage in active conversation, you'll need to quote what you're replying to, so email users are able to know what you're talking about. But then again, you're using weirdo words like fracktards, which are probably inflammatory and unintelligent anyway, so it's probably not worth even the reply I gave it. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
It is not clear if Sun provided enough information to invalidate all the patents that ZFS was threatened with. PJ @ Groklaw does not appear to have updated the status of the ZFS dispute since 2008. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
This would only matter if they were still worth doing development for. It's not a wise investment of time at this point, and probably never will be again. This matters to dimwit suit wearing fracktards, but to everyone else it's pretty irrelevant in the bigger picture. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
Seems like Oracle Solaris users are safe, not sure if other companies using ZFS in their products. re also included. I'm not a lawyer:-) http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9I4EAR80 .htm I certainly hope the terms of the settlement are released. Keeping it secret would conspire to cast FUD on all other distributions incorporating ZFS or considering it; most of which would be targeted at folks well below the Fortune 500, which means those not wealthy enough to qualify as Oracle customers anyway. :-/ -- This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
Hi, Given that computer software is just a series of mathematical operations expressed in a form that can be interpreted by a processor, I find the whole concept of software patents less than original. Would it not be in the best interests of those individuals and organisations using ZFS to find prior art and invalidate the NetApp patents by submission of information to the USPO anyway to prevent any future litigation. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
I believe that was the crux of the situation, Sun did find prior art from a whitepaper or presentation that pre-dates WAFL. I think if they had not settled, NetApp would have been in a ton more trouble than Sun Oracle. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Octave J. Orgeron Solaris Virtualization Architect and Consultant Web: http://unixconsole.blogspot.com E-Mail: unixcons...@yahoo.com *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* - Original Message From: russell str...@willows7.myzen.co.uk To: opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org Sent: Fri, September 10, 2010 12:08:53 PM Subject: Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS Hi, Given that computer software is just a series of mathematical operations expressed in a form that can be interpreted by a processor, I find the whole concept of software patents less than original. Would it not be in the best interests of those individuals and organisations using ZFS to find prior art and invalidate the NetApp patents by submission of information to the USPO anyway to prevent any future litigation. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] NetApp and Oracle settle patent dispute over ZFS
I certainly hope the terms of the settlement are released. Keeping it secret would conspire to cast FUD on all other distributions incorporating ZFS or considering it; most of which would be targeted at folks well below the Fortune 500, which means those not wealthy enough to qualify as Oracle customers anyway. :-/ Somehow the Register always knows more then the other news sources;-) excerpt from news: NetApp and Oracle have agreed to dismiss their respective lawsuits against each other without prejudice. ZFS-using companies such as Coraid and Nexenta can now go ahead free of the threat of NetApp interference The supposition now is that Compellent, Coraid, GreenBytes and Nexenta can go back to using ZFS without the threat of NetApp legal action. I guess since ZFS is released under CDDL whom ever uses it is also covered. I think what really happen was Oracle told NetApp, if they wanted to be next on oracle's companies to buy list;-) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/09/oracle_netapp_zfs_dismiss/ -- This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
