As a contributor, you could submit a patch noting the existence of the patent, *If you know that a patent reads on it*. As a PMC member, I'm advised by legal-discuss@ to reject the patch, unless you can get a grant from Stanford.
However, 'having heard' is not the same thing as *knowing*. A vague rumor does not trigger any of this. The fact that CMU has chosen to distribute an implementation is neither here nor there. On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 8:25 AM, Sebastian Schelter <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello everyone, > > I have a question regarding legal issues. > > I have one of my students implement PageRank in MapReduce, would it be > possible to contribute this to Mahout or are there any legal issues > prohibiting this? > > I read that Stanford is holding a patent on PageRank but I've seen a > PageRank implementation already included in the Pegasus Framework from > Carnegie Mellon University which is Apache licensed. > > Can someone help here with advice? > > --sebastian >
