On Tue, 2010-07-13 at 10:51 -0400, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
> > From: Bob Friesenhahn [mailto:bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us]
> >
> > > A private license, with support and indemnification from Sun, would
> > > shield Apple from any lawsuit from Netapp.
> >
> > The patent holder is not compelled
> > in any way to offer a license for use of the patent. Without a patent
> > license, shipping products can be stopped dead in their tracks.
>
> It may be true, that Netapp could stop apple from shipping OSX, if Apple had
> ZFS in OSX, and Netapp won the lawsuit. But there was a time when it was
> absolutely possible for Sun & Apple to reach an agreement which would limit
> Apple's liability in the event of lawsuit waged against them.
>
> CDDL contains an explicit disclaimer of warranty, which means, if Apple were
> to download CDDL ZFS source code and compile and distribute it themselves,
> they would be fully liable for any lawsuit waged against them. But CDDL
> also allows for Sun to distribute ZFS binaries under a different license, in
> which Sun could have assumed responsibility for losses, in the event Apple
> were to be sued.
That would not, IMO, have prevented any potential stop-ship order from
keeping MacOS X shipping. I just think it would have created a
situation where Apple could have insisted that Oracle (well Sun)
reimburse it for lost revenue.
The lawyers at Sun were typically defensive in that they frowned (very
much) upon any legal agreements which left Sun in a position if
unlimited legal liability. This actually nearly prevented the
development of certain software, since that software required an NDA
clause which provided for unlimited liability due to lost revenue were
Sun to leak the NDA content. (We developed the software using openly
obtainable materials rather than NDA content, to prevent this
possibility.)
- Garrett
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