Re: ARC patent

From: Neil Conway <neilc(at)samurai(dot)com>
To: "Joshua D(dot) Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
Cc: Jeff Davis <jdavis-pgsql(at)empires(dot)org>, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: ARC patent
Date: 2005-01-17 23:15:04
Message-ID: 1106003704.22946.89.camel@localhost.localdomain
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On Mon, 2005-01-17 at 12:30 -0800, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> The biggest problem is going to be that if we release 8 with
> the patented stuff, then for a minimum of 3 years there will
> be liability for anyone running 8.
>
> We still have people running 7.1 and once you get something
> into production you typically don't just "change" it.

Keep in mind that it would be conceivable to ship an 8.0.x release which
replaces ARC with another algorithm. That would be a somewhat
non-trivial change, but there's no reason we need to wait for a major
release (i.e. 8.1 or 8.2) to replace ARC.

> Basically I think the fact that we are even considering leaving
> the knowingly infringing code in 8 is presenting a horrible
> face to the community.

I agree with Tom -- this shouldn't be an impediment to releasing 8.0,
but it definitely warrants attention in the future.

-Neil

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