Re: Patent issues and 8.1

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> pgman wrote:

...

>>What I would like to do is to pledge that we will put out an 8.0.X to
>>address any patent conflict experienced by our users. This would
>>include ARC or anything else. This way we don't focus just on ARC but
>>have a plan for any patent issues that appear, and we don't have to
>>adjust our development cycle until an actual threat appears.

This "pledge" sounds like an open-ended commitment of an infinite number
of development hours. I don't think you can pledge to address "any"
patent conflict. There is a limit to the number of tgl-hours in a day :).

>>One advantage we have is that we can easily adjust our code to work
>>around patented code by just installing a new binary. (Patents that
>>affect our storage format would be more difficult. A fix would have to
>>perhaps rewrite the on-disk data.)

"easily"? Maybe, maybe not. I don't think you can assume that the fix to
as-yet-unknown patent conflicts is necessarily going to be easy. Even
the USPTO occasionally grants patents on things that aren't trivial.

Just my AUD0.02, which should probably be worth even less given the size
of my contribution to postgresql to date.

Tim

--
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Tim Allen tim(at)proximity(dot)com(dot)au
Proximity Pty Ltd http://www.proximity.com.au/
http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/rita_tim/