Re: 8.0.X and the ARC patent

Tom Lane wrote:
> pgsql(at)mohawksoft(dot)com writes:
> > Might it be possible to contact IBM directly and ask if they will allow
> > usage of the patent for PostgreSQL. They've let 500 patents for open
> > source, maybe they'll give a write off for this as well.
>
> If there were hard evidence that the ARC algorithm was far better than
> the alternatives, it might be worth going in that direction. But there
> is no such evidence. Jan has retracted his original opinion that the
> ARC code is a big improvement over what we had before, and I haven't
> seen anyone else putting up benchmark numbers that say we need to keep
> ARC.

And ARC has locking requirements that will make it very hard to fix our
SMP buffer management problems in 8.1.

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