Re: Patent warning about the Greenplum source code

On 1 November 2015 at 07:47, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 01:27:13AM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 04:47:35AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > Therefore, I caution people from viewing the Greenplum source code as
> > > you might see patented ideas that could be later implemented in
> > > Postgres, opening Postgres up to increased patent violation problems.
> I
> > > am also concerned about existing community members who work for
> > > Pivotal/Greenplum and therefore are required to view the patented
> source
> > > code. The license issue might eventually be improved by
> > > Pivotal/Greenplum, but, for now, I think caution is necessary.
> > >
> > > Of course, never mention known-patented ideas in any community forum,
> > > including this email list.
> >
> > I just found out that Citus Data has patent applications pending, so
> > viewing Citus Data source code has the same problems as Greenplum.
>
> Actually, it might only be their closed source software that contains
> patents, i.e. not pg_shard. I will check and report back when I can
> unless someone else reports here first.

While you are doing that, please also check EnterpriseDB. My information is
that there are patents filed there, so we must check that just as much as
any other company or person. If you didn't know before, you do now.

I am disappointed that your approach to this appears unbalanced and
partisan. Worse, Greenplum have been quite vocal about their intentions, so
any feedback you have could easily have been given many months ago, not on
the day of their announcement. I think you should have declared this
situation in a very different way to the way you have approached this. 5
minutes thought on whether other companies might also have been affected
would have been sensible, plus the whole thing could have been discussed
completely offlist. If you do discuss things on-list then you should at
least state for the record that you are an EnterpriseDB employee when
discussing your concerns, since that is likely to have a material affect on
how this situation is viewed by anyone worried by your post.

For the record, I have no commercial relationship of any kind with
Greenplum, so I am an informed observer only.

Please say no more until you have a full set of information; I suggest you
discuss that privately with each person/company first, to give them time to
explain.

--
Simon Riggs http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
<http://www.2ndquadrant.com/>
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services