Hi,

see also Doug Cutting's comment in the Mahout project [1]:

> > you or any other apache guy are NOT qualified to judge if a patent applies
> +1, nor whether its owner objects to your use of any patent.
> 
> I would generally discourage folks from doing patent research when 
> implementing Apache code. It is usually both a waste of time and dangerous, 
> since it opens you to the possibility of treble damages. In particular, if 
> you are involved in patching this issue, please do not read the above cited 
> patent.
> 
> A patent holder may tell us if they believe we have infringed their patents. 
> We should generally wait for that event, and not pro-actively seek permission.


The Hadoop people probably don't care as well [2]. There is IBM and Yahoo and 
many others using it that have the money for other suits to oppose this patent. 
If there were a case I doubt the patent would withstand the fact that map and 
reduce are around for some time now and that this really is nothing new...

Daniel

[1]: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-31
[2]: 
http://gigaom.com/2010/01/19/why-hadoop-users-shouldnt-fear-googles-new-mapreduce-patent/

Am 20.01.2010 um 14:55 schrieb David Coallier:

> 2010/1/20 Paul Davis <[email protected]>:
>> I'm not concerned. Our implementation isn't really like Google's.
>> Single M/R invocations don't get spawned across multiple hosts or have
>> automatic restart when nodes fail which is suggested as the crux of
>> their patent. They cite implementations for working with large data
>> sets that don't have those features as prior art. Not that I spent
>> three years of my life in law school...
>> 
> 
> Good to hear, I could hear the suits getting animated here.
> 
> -- 
> Slan,
> David

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