Yeah, if they can show you've read the patent they get "willful infringement damages" and other bits. As a FOSS I've been trained to never ever read patents. The M/R one just kinda sprung up and caught me like a deer in headlights.
On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 9:19 AM, Daniel Truemper <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 > >
