Edward Capriolo wrote:
I was just mentioning that in the sco linux suit , comanies that were
using linux as a fileserver or ftp server were targeted, not only
companies that developed packaged linux.
Relying on a corporation to be benevolant, is a risk in itself. A
change in management could cause a change in policy.
a decision maker might avoid hadoop as it is more risky to deploy now.
In particular if that company was in some way competitive to google.
SCO sued people who had bought Unix source code licenses and threatened
end-users of linux over copyright. No patent lawsuits, just doomed
copyright T&Cs.
Generally those companies that want to work with open source don't waste
time trying to enforce patents because its a losing battle. You lose a
lot of goodwill, and when you consider that the Android stack is built
on truckloads of Apache and other open source java code, the loss of
that goodwill can be quite significant. Add in that Google is a platinum
sponsor of apache, and you can see the conflicts of interest that will
develop.
I have no idea what they will do with the MR patent, but note that the
ASF license says "Sue someone over some apache code you have a patent
for and you lose the right to use that apache code yourself". While
Google don't use Hadoop internally, they have been using it for their
academic testbed.
Finally, I don't think the patent applies outside the US, and if they
published before filing, its harder to get an EU/UK patent. So host your
code here in europe and not only are you free from this patent concern,
your customers benefit from your requirement to follow EU data
protection laws. Everyone wins.
-Steve
