On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Raymond Jennings III <[email protected]> wrote: > I am not a patent attorney either but for what it's worth - many times a > patent is sought solely to protect a company from being sued from another. > So even though Hadoop is out there it could be the case that Google has no > intent of suing anyone who uses it - they just wanted to protect themselves > from someone else claiming it as their own and then suing Google. But yes, > the patent system clearly has problems as you stated. > > --- On Wed, 1/20/10, Edward Capriolo <[email protected]> wrote: > >> From: Edward Capriolo <[email protected]> >> Subject: Re: Google has obtained the patent over mapreduce >> To: [email protected] >> Date: Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 12:09 PM >> Interesting situation. >> >> I try to compare mapreduce to the camera. Let argue Google >> is Kodak, >> Apache is Polaroid, and MapReduce is a Camera. Imagine >> Kodak invented >> the camera privately, never sold it to anyone, but produced >> some >> document describing what a camera did. >> >> Polaroid followed the document and produced a camera and >> sold it >> publicly. Kodak later patents a camera, even though no one >> outside of >> Kodak can confirm Kodak ever made a camera before >> Polaroid. >> >> Not saying that is what happened here, but google releasing >> the GFS >> pdf was a large factor in causing hadoop to happen. >> Personally, it >> seems like they gave away too much information before they >> had the >> patent. >> >> The patent system faces many problems including this 'back >> to the >> future' issue. Where it takes so long to get a patent no >> one can wait, >> by the time a patent is issued there are already multiple >> viable >> implementations of a patent. >> >> I am no patent layer or anything, but I notice the phrase >> "master >> process" all over the claims. Maybe if a piece of software >> (hadoop) >> had a "distributed process" that would be sufficient to say >> hadoop >> technology does not infringe on this patent. >> >> I think it would be interesting to look deeply at each >> claim and >> determine if hadoop could be designed to not infringe on >> these >> patents, to deal with what if scenarios. >> >> >> >> On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 11:29 AM, Ravi <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > Hi, >> > I too read about that news. I don't think that it >> will be any problem. >> > However Google didn't invent the model. >> > >> > Thanks. >> > >> > On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 9:47 PM, Udaya Lakshmi <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > >> >> Hi, >> >> As an user of hadoop, Is there anything to >> worry about Google obtaining >> >> the patent over mapreduce? >> >> >> >> Thanks. >> >> >> > >> > > > >
@Raymond Yes. I agree with you. As we have learned from SCO->linux. Corporate users can become the target of legal action not the technology vendor. This could scare a large corporation away from using hadoop. They take a risk knowing that they could be targeted just for using the software.
