Clarification regarding inclusion of PageRank in Mahout

[Sebastian Schelter]

Hello,

this is Sebastian from the PMC of Apache Mahout writing. We received a 
contribution that includes an implementation of Google's famous PageRank 
algorithm (see https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-742 ).

We'd love to include this in Mahout, yet we know that the University of 
Stanford is holding a patent on PageRank ( 
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6285999 ). It seems that this patent 
is not enforced because there are a lot of PageRank implementations 
already available on the internet.

However we'd like to get clarification on whether we are allowed to 
include this implementation in Mahout.

I already contacted Prof. Garcia-Molina from Stanford's Departments of 
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering asking for advice who 
helpfully suggested to contact Deputy General Counsel Thomas W. Fenner 
(tfenner [at] stanford.edu) to clarify the legal issues.

This is my first time working on a legal issue regarding Apache, what is 
the process and what do I have to do to get clarification?

Thank you,
Sebastian