Thread: IBM patent
Hi, I just read about this IBM-patent-issue at www.heise.de. IBM grants this patens to all projects, which follow one of the licenses, which are approved by the open-source-initiative. And the BSD-license is as far as I see approved (I found "New BSD license"). When releasing commercial closed-source-variants of postgresql this BSD-license stays intact, so the use of these patents in postgresql seems ok. Tommi Mäkitalo
Oops! t.maekitalo@epgmbh.de (Tommi Maekitalo) was seen spray-painting on a wall:
> Hi,
>
> I just read about this IBM-patent-issue at www.heise.de. IBM grants
> this patens to all projects, which follow one of the licenses, which
> are approved by the open-source-initiative. And the BSD-license is
> as far as I see approved (I found "New BSD license").
>
> When releasing commercial closed-source-variants of postgresql this
> BSD-license stays intact, so the use of these patents in postgresql
> seems ok.
Actually, the latter isn't so.
If Mammoth or Pervasive or such release their own release of
PostgreSQL, nothing has historically mandated that they make that
release available under the BSD license.
Presumably acceptance of the patent would change that.
You and I might not have individual objections to this situation, but
one or another of the companies putting together PostgreSQL releases
very well might.
--
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On Wed, 26 Jan 2005, Christopher Browne wrote: > Actually, the latter isn't so. > > If Mammoth or Pervasive or such release their own release of > PostgreSQL, nothing has historically mandated that they make that > release available under the BSD license. > > Presumably acceptance of the patent would change that. > > You and I might not have individual objections to this situation, but > one or another of the companies putting together PostgreSQL releases > very well might. But, there is nothing stop'ng them from replacing the ARC code with their own variant though ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664
Marc G. Fournier wrote: > On Wed, 26 Jan 2005, Christopher Browne wrote: > > >Actually, the latter isn't so. > > > >If Mammoth or Pervasive or such release their own release of > >PostgreSQL, nothing has historically mandated that they make that > >release available under the BSD license. > > > >Presumably acceptance of the patent would change that. > > > >You and I might not have individual objections to this situation, but > >one or another of the companies putting together PostgreSQL releases > >very well might. > > But, there is nothing stop'ng them from replacing the ARC code with > their own variant though ... Not only that, I'd go further and say that they have a duty to either do that or pay someone to do it. They are, after all, the entities that probably care about the situation the most. This type of situation seems to me to be one that has to be examined from a "greatest good" point of view. If IBM were to allow all open source projects to make free use of a patent (thus exposing only those entities which sell commercial versions under a non-open-source license to risk), then the PG group might be faced with the tradeoff of using a superior but patented (though free for open source use) algorithm, or using a possibly inferior but unencumbered one. I'd wager that the vast majority of PostgreSQL users received their copy via the open source license. Unless the encumbered algorithm is not significantly superior to the unencumbered one, the "greater good" is likely to be to make use of the patented algorithm and force the non-open-source vendors to deal with removing the algorithm themselves. None of that really applies to the specific situation we're discussing, however: the current ARC implementation is apparently not showing itself to be a clearly superior approach, so some other approach is probably warranted. -- Kevin Brown kevin@sysexperts.com
Am Samstag, 29. Januar 2005 23:32 schrieb Marc G. Fournier: > On Wed, 26 Jan 2005, Christopher Browne wrote: > > Actually, the latter isn't so. > > > > If Mammoth or Pervasive or such release their own release of > > PostgreSQL, nothing has historically mandated that they make that > > release available under the BSD license. > > > > Presumably acceptance of the patent would change that. > > > > You and I might not have individual objections to this situation, but > > one or another of the companies putting together PostgreSQL releases > > very well might. > > But, there is nothing stop'ng them from replacing the ARC code with their > own variant though ... > And what if there are many more patented parts? If someone wants to have a patent-free variant, he has to replace big parts of postgresql? That wouldn't be good for postgresql. If there is a patent-problem, postgresql has to remove it. What I think about is the legal implications. Sorry, but I don't know BSD very well. Does BSD really allow to remove this BSD-license and put his own, or does BSD allow to release commercial closed-source-variants under the BSD-license? Tommi