Robert Treat wrote:
> On Thursday 14 April 2005 15:56, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> > Robert Treat wrote:
> > > I find it hard to believe that no one in the community has the
> > > resources to pull this off. Heck I know a couple of people who know
> > > people at IBM that probably could have pointed me in the right
> > > direction.
> >
> > The only acceptable solutions for this issue would have been IBM
> > withdrawing the patent application or IBM making a legally binding
> > deposition that they grant a no-strings-attached patent license to
> > everyone. Neither of these things have the remotest chance of
> > happening. Neither IBM making this the 501st patent available for free
> > use by the open-source community nor IBM granting a patent license to
> > the PostgreSQL project nor IBM saying "don't worry about it" would have
> > been acceptable. So removing the code was the reasonable way to
> > resolve this on our part.
> >
>
> I believe there is at least the chance that IBM would have stated publicly
> they had no intention of enforcing the patent. Again, I don't know if they
> have done that before, but other companies have, and the good will gained
> from such a gesture to the open source community would have been huge.
IBM saying they will not enforce the patent isn't enough. I think
Amazon said that about their business process (a.k.a. silly) patents,
then went on to enforce them.
We would need some legal document that applied to us and companies that
make commercial products based on PostgreSQL, and that was not going to
happen in a timeframe we were comfortable with.
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
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