Posted by: Anonymous
[ip: 151.188.247.104]
on May 06, 2008 12:58 AM
Tim, as a (relatively) old-timer hacker, you know that organizational politics is the bane of hackers everywhere. We just want to write the code as best we can and have things work well.
You're old enough to remember the days back when "algorithms aren't patentable." Unfortunately, that changed 19 years ago. To use some of Sun's offerings (e. g. ZFS), we need to make sure we aren't going to get sued for doing so. One idea might be for Sun to just say, "FOSS projects, as defined by the [FSF|OSI], may use this patent in an unlimited fashion, sublicenseable to other FOSS projects, etc. However, *only* FOSS projects may do so, nothing proprietary without a specific agreement with us (Sun)." That way, Linux, OpenBSD, etc. could use stuff like ZFS without legal concerns. And it'd protect Sun from the Microsofts/Apples of the world pulling the ol' embrace/extend/extinguish garbage. You wanna use the patent, great, but you gotta play nice.
Sun has done a lot of very cool things, e. g. GPL'ing the Sun JVM and sponsoring the OpenOffice.org project. That's just two of many.
We need more "graybeards" like you out here, man. Keep on doin' it for as long as it's fun. May that continue for many years to come.
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Suggestion for Sun regarding software patents
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 151.188.247.104] on May 06, 2008 12:58 AMYou're old enough to remember the days back when "algorithms aren't patentable." Unfortunately, that changed 19 years ago. To use some of Sun's offerings (e. g. ZFS), we need to make sure we aren't going to get sued for doing so. One idea might be for Sun to just say, "FOSS projects, as defined by the [FSF|OSI], may use this patent in an unlimited fashion, sublicenseable to other FOSS projects, etc. However, *only* FOSS projects may do so, nothing proprietary without a specific agreement with us (Sun)." That way, Linux, OpenBSD, etc. could use stuff like ZFS without legal concerns. And it'd protect Sun from the Microsofts/Apples of the world pulling the ol' embrace/extend/extinguish garbage. You wanna use the patent, great, but you gotta play nice.
Sun has done a lot of very cool things, e. g. GPL'ing the Sun JVM and sponsoring the OpenOffice.org project. That's just two of many.
We need more "graybeards" like you out here, man. Keep on doin' it for as long as it's fun. May that continue for many years to come.
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