On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 12:16 PM, Chad Perrin <per...@apotheon.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 05, 2010 at 11:25:13PM -0500, Steven Susbauer wrote: > > On 11/5/10 4:34 PM, Chad Perrin wrote: > > >Will Oracle start using patent suits to try to stop people > > >who aren't paying for ZFS or who are using it on platforms other than > > >Solaris from using it? > > > > > >Whether you think concerns like these will prove reasonable in the long > > >run, they make a lot more sense than assuming that Alejandro just > wonders > > >if the CDDL is "dangerous" somehow. > > > > > > > I would be surprised. Oracle (real Oracle, not Sun) is still the primary > > developer of btrfs on Linux. They are pretty much going for feature > > parity with ZFS and want people to actually use it. If they start suing > > over ZFS patents which are certainly applicable to btrfs, it will have > > repercussions on that side. > > Perhaps. > > On the other hand, Oracle could offer some kind of "patent covenant" > protecting btrfs while going after a ZFS fork as a way of "focing" people > to migrate from it to btrfs, as a more hostile way of achieving what > Microsoft does when it ends support for an older OS to get people to buy > the newer Windows release. > > . . . or maybe Oracle will decide it doesn't need the open source > community's help any longer at some future date, and shut down *both* > open source filesystem development projects. > > Oracle is known to be at least intermittently hostile toward open source > software, in ways that are sometimes more frightening than Microsoft's > hostility. This is scaring people, and I don't blame them. The > uncertainty about Oracle's future position on everything it has acquired > with Sun is something that will need to be tested and observed to see how > it shakes out in the next few years; in the meantime, I do not blame > anyone for being cautious about committing to use of open source software > under the Oracle umbrella. > > -- > Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] > Chad, what are these attachments to your e-mail? My client keeps flagging your mail as questionable and I'm sandboxing it to make sure it's nothing bad :D _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
